Simply Fly

by Capt G R Gopinath

  Once we wanted to call a press conference. We got in touch with agencies that handled the media, which are typically PR agencies. They advise you on how to get good media coverage. They ask you to hire space in a five-star hotel and suggest that you invite journalists from leading media houses and treat them to food and liquor. They insist that the best way of making an impression on the media is through memorable gifts!

  When I was running the micro-irrigation systems business, there were times when the business went through an almost hand-to-mouth existence. There was one occasion when I thought that attracting media attention to the business might lift it out of its perilous state. In the process I became a victim of one of these media relations agencies. The agency took responsibility for the press conference. It produced a formula for a successful media event: five-star hotel, drinks, dinner, and gifts. Reporters would not be interested in an event if it were not held in a five-star hotel. Drinks and dinner were to be a routine part of the event, and gifts would be useful mnemonics for the journalist.

  I realized that if I followed the advice of the agency it would create a crater in my pocket. If, on the other hand, it guaranteed good press coverage then the money would be well-spent, so I agreed. The press conference was held. I hoped to see news splashes and bottom spreads in the news columns the following day, but in reality we had to pour over the papers with a magnifying glass to spot the news item about us. It struck me that reporters came, ate, and vanished. A phrase in Hindi describes this kind of a guest in colourful terms: ‘Khaya, peeya aur khisak gaya.’ In the newspapers there was only a small mention of us and that was tucked away in the inside pages. It was perhaps a four-or-five-line report, of column width about the size of a rupee coin. Some papers carried nothing.

  I should have been outraged at the press, but looked at it from their point of view. What I had done really was to insult the press. I had thought journalists could be bought. They came, ate, and left because they did not want to insult us, the organizers. That was when I realized that to a considerable degree we have an honest press. There are of course some dishonest people in the media, as there are dishonest and corrupt people in other professions too. There are corrupt businessmen, corrupt and venal politicians. Similarly, there is the odd corrupt journalist who brings disgrace to the entire media circuit. If the journalist you invite for a drink is an honest reporter he or she might come but will go back with contempt. He will never respect you, and that actually works against you.

  That was the last time I looked at the press in this manner. I gained intuitive understanding that the best way to advertise is to get a good press. Some things of course need paid advertising, but one inch of space in the columns of a reputable newspaper is worth a hundred inches of paid advertising. Any advertising professional worth his salt will agree to this. You of course know what creates a good news story, you must develop your own nose for news, to have the press hanging around you like the paparazzi. I had developed this insight long ago and, therefore, I was being covered by the press long before the helicopter company started and did not spend a single rupee for media coverage! I just spoke directly to the reporters with whom I had been interacting.

  Media professionals are bound by a different logic. They see growth within the profession and the organization they work for in a different way than a salesperson would. The career growth of a sales executive is linked to one parameter: more sales. For the salesperson, sales is the reason for existence. For the reporter the only objective is to publish good exclusive stories every day. That is not easy: the competition is intense. The reporter has two reasons for existence (raison d’être). S/he has to ensure that the story is truly newsworthy and is able to catch the attention of the reader. This is of prime importance. Exclusivity of the news item or breaking the news first, for which the reporter has to strive to be the first to get the story and publish it before anyone else does, is also an important factor. A stale story, however well-written and researched, does not make news. Sometimes the press goes overboard. It looks at things not from the perspective you want them to look at but from an entirely different point of view. Will a particular published story help increase the circulation of the newspaper? Will it induce a rise in the readership of the paper and lend it an edge over the competitor’s product?

  I once heard a speech by N. Ram, editor of The Hindu. Ram said the editor in many cases is also the owner of the publication. The editor has to position the publication like a business venture. However, the editor has also to meet the social responsibility of the media, and this is huge: to balance between income (because the publisher has to pay his staff salaries and meet the costs of production) and reporting the truth for the benefit of society.

  When the editor starts publishing merely sensational reports, the positioning of the newspaper is similar to that of a tabloid. It is a product positioning like Nirma or Surf. The product assures certain qualities and utility. The emphasis is on the sensational. There is crime and violence, photographs of celebrities, a gossip column. The language is racy, slang-ridden, and often salacious. If, however, you are positioning yourself as a serious paper then it is a challenge. It is difficult if you are the owner and the editor, but it is also difficult when you are the editor and you have a boss who is the owner. The editor has to serve his boss, on the one hand, and his profession on the other.

  According to N. Ram, there is an increasingly blurring of vision between responsibility to society and responsibility to the owner or business. If you do not generate income you go bankrupt. You will not be able to serve society. That was why you became a journalist in the first place. This calls for a fine balance.

  Good journalists have a nose for a good story. You can get a journalist interested in your business if you are able to tap that source of intuition. There could be one appealing aspect of your business, and if the reporter picks it up, you find yourself in the print and electronic media.

  I was in the press almost every day after the launch of the helicopter company, but getting the press is not enough. You still need to advertise. The advertisement carries information to the public about the company, its contact details, telephone numbers, an idea of rates and reach, as well as an idea of what services you offer.

  I used to call from Montreal, hoping for news of the first customer. For the company the first commercial flight would have been the most important because it would signal the beginning of commercial viability. Regardless of what you do, you must make a business profitable. Said Peter Drucker, ‘Businesses have only one reason to exist—to make a profit’. It is only when businesses make a profit that they pay taxes. Making a profit ethically is the only reason for businesses to exist.

  While what Drucker said is true for all times, the pressure of stock markets to put out quarterly profits, prompted Narayana Murthy of Infosys to observe, sympathetically but a little deprecatingly about the expectations: ‘As the CEO, you are only as good as your last quarter.’ You are there for the long-term and you have to pace your growth. Entrepreneurs face the challenge of how to build a business for the long-term without making losses in the short-term. However, companies that focus only on near-term profits and do not invest for the long-term build an edifice with a shallow foundation. They become vulnerable to even small economic crises. ‘Greatness appeals to the future!’

  The call came a week after the launch. It was from a corporate company seeking to hire our helicopter. We were also waiting for the chief minister. The first commercial flight caused great stir and excitement in the company. I was still in Montreal when I got a call. It was a great shriek from Sam. Sam said, ‘Gopi, guess what! Tomorrow we are doing the first sortie. The money has come into the account.’ We adopted this policy from the very first day. There would be no credit for anyone. This was not because we did not trust people but because we could not afford to give credit. I had learnt a lesson from my agriculture business. It was easy to sell on credit but an almost impossible task to recover due
s from an amorphous group of farmers. You give a farmer an irrigation system. If the crop fails, he will not pay you. You give a helicopter for medical evacuation on credit; if the patient dies you will not receive your payment. We decided not to give credit under any circumstances to anyone. We did not want a system where you had to employ people to collect dues. We were a lean organization where the pilot was salesman, dinner companion, and helicopter cleaner all bundled into one high-profile executive. I helped with some of the tasks when I accompanied the pilot.

  There is a reason for saying that my pilot was also my dinner companion! The managing director of the Bank of America once hired our helicopter. This was when we realized how important it was that we should build an impressive hangar. For about six months we had a tent for a front office. Then we built a hangar at a frenetic pace. I felt the need to create an image of a world-class and impeccable hangar; spotless in its upkeep, with a comfortable foyer for waiting passengers. I also wanted to build good maintenance facilities. It was a risk I took, because the investments were rather high. However, without such a facility we would have put off our customers and damaged the prospect of business growth right at the outset. We went ahead, built a great hangar, and set up excellent maintenance facilities.

  The visit of the CEO of the Bank of America was an eye-opener for me. It gave me an idea of the scale and grand manner in which global CEOs operate, well beyond the imagination of ordinary people. The Delhi-based India head of the bank had read in the papers about Deccan’s helicopter service. He called us to make enquiries and followed-up with several trips to Bengaluru. His first visit was a recce, an army term for reconnaissance, to explore the lie of the land. He wanted to see for himself what facilities we offered and told us the CEO would be busy at meetings in Bengaluru, in connection with investments the bank had made or planned to make. He was also looking for ways to keep the Global CEO’s wife entertained during the visit. He observed that there was nothing much to see by way of tourist interest in the city. Was there something in the neighbourhood that would be of interest to a VIP tourist? We suggested a day-long programme. The lady takes off in the morning; she visits the royal palace in Mysore, a short haul by helicopter followed, by a lunche at the Lalit Mahal Palace Hotel and then flies to the game sanctuary in Nagarahole and watches animals in the wild; she enjoys a barbecue by the river, and then flies back to Bengaluru before dusk.

  The India head was impressed, but he wanted an assurance from us that everything would work to clockwork precision; that there would be no glitches, and no faux pas. He warned us: the least cause for the lady’s dissatisfaction would cause heads to roll, his included. We promised to do our best and he left.

  The India head’s report was appreciated and the office of the global CEO initiated the next steps. A team of aviation auditors flew in all the way from the US to do an audit of our operations. They checked our log books, our operations and maintenance books. They looked at our pilot records. They interviewed the pilot. They inspected our hangar. They looked at the remarks made by DGCA auditors. In short, they did what a DGCA auditor would properly do.

  The chief of the auditing team then sent a fax to their office: there was no email in India yet. The fax read as follows: ‘Guess what! I was expecting to find a banana republic kind of a shed but the Deccan Aviation facility is better than some of the best facilities in America.’

  That assessment and the acknowledgement of our facility by the team made us feel really proud. We knew we were on to something really big.

  Yet another team from Israel, an independent security auditing agency, visited our facilities for a security audit. We were amazed at the extent to which the corporate executives went to prepare ground for the visit of their global CEOs. They must have spent many times more on the visits by the aviation audit and security audit teams than what it eventually cost them to use our helicopter service. The elaborate preparations made by Intel executives just to get their global CEO to fly to Infosys campus from the centre of Bengaluru, a mere seven-minute ride in our helicopter, went even further. They insisted on a twin-engine helicopter which we had to fly in from Kolkata. It took the helicopter twenty-two hours to fly from Kolkata to Bengaluru and back, and the costs were borne by the company. Global CEOs of large corporations are surely a class by themselves!

  The aviation audit team cleared us and the Bank of America’s global CEO was the first of Deccan’s many global CEO customers.

  This was the kind of thing I had visualized. I was now exploring how to tap this great tourism potential for people who were hard pressed for time. The reform measures had made it attractive for companies to explore the market in India. Many CEOs of overseas companies had begun, if warily, to come to India. The work of a CEO is never finished, as they say: ‘Only Robinson Crusoe could get his work done by Friday!’ If work does not get over by Friday, she or he stays back for the weekend. How does one spend the weekend? Visiting the restaurants and pubs at star hotels is one. A CEO from the Netherlands once told me that he had been to Bengaluru fourteen times but had never seen anything but his five-star hotel and the airport! I realized that such ‘stranded’ CEOs are like beached whales: they might want to get away and they would if they had handy and comfortable means of transport. I knew from my own assays into the countryside as a trekker and explorer that all the places worth visiting in Karnataka were a mere one to one-and-a-half hours’ journey from Bengaluru by helicopter! These included the palaces of Mysore and Srirangapattanam; the historic ruins of the capital of Vijayanagara Empire at Hampi; the bird sanctuary at Ranganathittu; the wildlife sanctuaries in Bandipur and Nagarahole; the magnificent temples at Belur and Halebid; and the colossal monolithic statue of Gomata at Shravanabelagola. This was true also of the other places of tourist attraction elsewhere in the country: they were all within an hour or two from the nearest metro by helicopter. Many locations of tourist interest in Karnataka are not easily accessible by road and often there is no rail connection. There are no airports within hundreds of kilometres. How then do these senior executives reach those enchanting places? A heli-cab was the perfect answer!

  We put out an advertisement with the bold caption Dial-a-Chopper. A customer could dial-up and hire a helicopter at the spur of the moment. The customer could fly to Belur and Halebid and see the temples there; visit the wildlife sanctuaries at Nagarahole, Bandipur, and Kabini; spend a night at a jungle resort on the banks of the Kabini River; and fly back by the end of the weekend. Before Deccan, this was impossible to do. A trip outside was planned at least fifteen days in advance. Travel agents offered inter-city packages but were not in a position to execute local visits and therefore all our great wildlife parks, forts, palaces, and temples were beyond the reach of people who had decided to fly.

  We negotiated with property owners for landing pads. We asked them not to cut trees and leave the grass unmowed. Grass landings are good for a helicopter: it cushions the landings so that the helicopter gets more landings and a higher lifespan. Also there is no dust. By identifying designated pads, coordinates can be entered in the GPS systems aboard the helicopter and any pilot can land there. Without the GPS, an advance party would have to prepare a helipad and the pilot would have to look out for the landing spot.

  We heeded Douglas Cavanaugh’s suggestion and prepared a helipad directory of one-off landing pads that are not government helipads. The directory and a map would allow pilots to land without a problem.

  We realized that there was a synergy between the owners of resorts and us. They needed guests to use their hospitality and we needed customers. They were however so difficult to access that the occupancy rates were low. For instance, Jungle Lodges and Resorts is a world famous wildlife resort in the Nagarahole forests. It also provides access to a fishing camp. The resort is five hours by road from Bengaluru. This resort was under-visited because of poor connectivity. I proposed a cooperative model to their management. We would print cards and publicize the resort with contact details and
facilities offered. They would place tent display cards in bedrooms and prominent living areas and would also display posters providing details of Deccan Aviation charters. We did not ask for a commission on guest visits but asked for a room for our pilot and functional hospitality. We also asked for a place for landing and access to it. The resort had to ensure that the pad was free of trees or structures or other impediments such as power lines or telephone lines. The resort would receive both guests and the pilot at the helicopter pad, and transport them to the resort. They would also provide security for the helicopter. The resorts jumped at the opportunity.

  Deccan pilots surveyed potential landing pads in major resorts and identified landing sites. Some were on farmlands; some were part of a school playground or police ground. They also located places where we could store fuel.

  The comprehensive arrangements allowed us to serve customers at an hour’s short notice. If a customer called at ten in the night, our pilot would be ready for take-off at six in the morning.

  The global CEO of the Bank of America landed. It is an army joke that when the general comes you’ve got to take care of his wife. If she’s upset, the general will skew your happiness. We had prepared an itinerary that included the Kaveri fishing camp, one of the best in the world, and one which sports and adventure magazines had ranked among the top ten angling camps in the world. The pilot would not simply ferry the VIP passenger. He would fly zigzag showing the lady interesting sidelights along the way: waterfalls, promontories, historical monuments, palaces, and temples. The journey would be as exciting as the destination because of the spectacularly close views it offered of scenic objects on the earth below.