8/7/2019 Capt. Gopinath

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INTERVIEW

Entrepreneur, helicopter pilot, farmer, politician and now author. Captain Gopinath, CMD,

Deccan Express Logistics, who made flying affordable in India, has now released his

autobiography called ± ³Simplify Fly: A Deccan Odyssey´.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Captain Gopinath spoke about the inspiration behind thebook.

Here is a verbatim transcript of the interview. Also watch the accompanying video.  

Q: What was the inspiration behind the book?  

A: I was very frequently called by CEOs, by the country head of GE, Britannia - Vinita

Bali, they would call me and say Captain, can you t alk to our senior management as to

how do you take on a cartel, how do you behave like an insurgent in large companies?

Can you talk to them?

So I would not go out and give a power point presentation like the five ways of 

marketing, five ways of timing the stock market or building a brand or operations but I

would just go and tell them what I did. And it would never be only about Deccan, I would

talk about my early days, my village life, my farm life, my army life, my war, and thenalso I went back to farming and got into debt, got out of debt and how I set up my

helicopter company and the kind of obstacles that came my way, the bureaucracy, the

politicians, corruption of business people.

Q: We understand you were looking at private equity participation for your cargo

business. What stage is it at and what are the expansion plans there?  

A: When I decided to launch Deccan 360 it was at the very height of the stock market

boom, it was also at the very height of considerable amount of wealth I had myself 

generated. I think at the very height of success you sow the seed of destruction and a lot

of arrogance sets in. Also everybody was chasing me, people from private wealth,

people from private equity funds and the banks wanting to manage my wealth or invest

in my company.Then overnight the world economy collapsed and a lot of companies synonymous with

wealth and banking went bankrupt. I think for about a year there was an absolute

shellshock, limbo. Then I decided I should do exactly what I did with Deccan, put

everything I have and start once more. I said let me do it, this is not the time to ask for 

money, I must put my money where my mouth is.

So, I mortgaged everything my house, my shares, my stocks and started all over again. I

said let me build the company an d let me choose the private equity players at the right

time. And now the company has been launched, we have got a nationwide presence.

We have unprecedented connectivity, we have built our own IT, we have 7 aircrafts now

and another 4 are joining, going t o the very bowels of this country. We have nationwide

trucking, nationwide warehousing and all that is in place. Now again the market ispicking up, the economy is on a roll. So people are calling us. So I thought I will choose

the time and the investor myself at the right point in time.

Q: How soon do you think that will be?  

A: Maybe 3-4 months, I am not in a hurry.

Q: You also a little while ago dabbled in politics. Do we see you maybe looking at

that at some other point again?  

8/7/2019 Capt. Gopinath

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A: Yes, I said it was not my first time and it is there in my book. I was very seriously and

deeply in politics and I contested an election 15 years ago. I was the President of a

political party, of the district because I always felt that all of us we have a profession.

But we are human beings so we need to understand that and you owe something to the

society. I am not saying everybody should contest, you need people to make bread, you

need people to plough the fields, you need somebody to write and write software, butyou also need to take a stand. And that is the reason I did not want to join any political

party to make a point that there is corruption and also to make a point that we are

responsible for it.