Jhunjhunwala-backed Akasa hires former IndiGo executive Ankur Goel as CFO

Akasa – airline founded by former Jet Airways CEO Vinay Dube has hired Ankur Goel-former head of IndiGo’s treasury ad investor relations as the airline’s Chief Financial Officer.

The airline backed by ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and which has former IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh on board is in final negotiations with aircraft manufacturer Boeing for an order of up to 100 737 Max. It aims to start operations by the summer of 2022.

Goel with over 16 years of experience in various field’s of finance was a core member of the team which led IndiGo’s public listing in 2015 raising Rs 3,000 crore followed by a Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP) in 2017 which raised around Rs 4,000 crore.

While Jhunjhunwala has invested Rs 247.50 crore in the airline, another big name is DalaI street, Madhav Bhatkuly, the founder of investment fund New Horizon, has also invested around Rs 6 crore in the company.

Bhatkuly is known for identifying big companies at early stage and was among the first institutional investors in many leading names of India Inc like—-Sun Pharma, Godrej Consumer, Axis Bank and Apollo Hospitals.

With Goel’s hiring, the airline has now completed hiring of its top management. While promoter Vinay Dube will be the CEO, Praveen Iyer will be the Chief Commercial Officer. Iyer, a former colleague of Dubey at Jet Airways is one of the founding members of the team along with Neelu Khatri who has been appointed as head of corporate affairs and was most recently president of Honeywell Business in India.