Air India

India and the Global Attention Surplus Disorder!

Jan 17th, 2023:  BBC releases the first part of the documentary on Modi titled “India: The Modi Question”. Among other things, the documentary goes on to levy charges on Modi for his role during the Gujarat riots back in 2002 when he was the Chief Minister of the state. It is another matter that the courts and different committees have delved into the same matter for so many years and have exonerated Modi for his involvement in inciting the riots as claimed by the documentary.

Jan 24th, 2023: Hindenburg, an American short seller, publishes a report on the Adani group in which it accuses Adani group of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades.” This was just three days before the opening of Adani’s FPO in the market. The ensuing brouhaha led eventually to the withdrawal of the FPO only after a massive evaporation of its market capitalisation.

Feb 6th, 2023: In the US, the Deputy Secretary of State briefed that “The surveillance balloon effort, which has operated for several years partly out of Hainan province off China’s south coast, has collected information on military assets in countries and areas of emerging strategic interest to China including Japan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines,”

Feb 17th, 2023: At the Munich security summit, an annual conference on global security issues, George Soros, an American business magnate and philanthropist launched a scathing tirade on the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In his speech, he also referred to the Hindenburg report and said that Modi and Adani were close allies and that their fate was intertwined.

If you look at all these stories, a few things are strikingly common – the stories are about India, they are damning in design and emanating from outside India.

Quoting World Bank data, Centre says Indias PPP-based economy reached $8 trillion in 2017

Welcome to India’s “Global Attention Surplus Disorder” TM (GASD) era. At the outset, let me clarify that this has got nothing to do with Attention Deficit Disorder which is a mental condition. Global Attention Surplus Disorder is when a country is subjected to excessive attention globally because of which stories mostly of the critical type about the country keep coming out at regular intervals.

It is important to note that all countries are not automatically subjected to this syndrome. In the evolution of any country, there comes a time when the country becomes in a way eligible for excessive attention.  Once eligible, it becomes a part of this privileged league of nations. I believe that for India, this started last year (2022), though we have often threatened to get into this league but slipped back in the last minute. Why did India become part of this league and is getting subjected to GASD?

When a sportsperson starts doing well in mega events, she starts becoming the cynosure of all eyes. She also comes under scrutiny not just for her sports feats but also for her conduct in her personal life (Think Sania Mirza). Among all the film stars, if you are a top star like one of the Khans, obviously you are at the centre of all attention and scrutiny. You will receive your regular dose of bouquets but when the brickbats come, they will be heavy and bitter. Ask Aamir Khan. If you are the among the richest and most famous you cannot escape the attention of the prying news reporters. Look at the Ambanis. A dominant and globally successful company is always under media scrutiny not just for its success but also for its omissions and commissions. Search Google. A very quick upstart, which was initially the darling of the one and all could face the bile of the same media and regulators worldwide when it becomes over-successful. What happened to Facebook (Meta)? Even when a politician becomes extremely popular with the public and becomes a darling of the masses, he becomes a victim of excessive and continuous scrutiny. Even if it’s a Modi.

This has what has changed for India in the past few months. For a populous country like India, it weathered the Covid storm pretty well. In the past few years, the fundamentals of the economy are getting stronger because of which the country’s resilience to external shocks has improved drastically. Despite global headwinds like Covid, the Ukraine war and now the global economic slowdown, India continues to grow at a faster clip than all major economies. For the future, the world is now predicting that this could be India’s decade. There is a visible transformation of infrastructure in the country. Highways, Railways, Airports, Metros, sea links are all finally moving toward completion in the next five years after being in a permanent Work In Progress phase. The adoption of digital solutions to solve the country’s public issues seem real and this holds a lot of “hard” promise for the future. In the past, our promises remained “soft”.  As we saw in the recent mega order of the aircrafts, big powers are looking to India to help them.

In Marketing it is said that for a market leader apart from doing routine things to increase its share, and expand the market, the bigger challenge is to ring-fence itself from some “Public Relations (PR) storm” or other that it is subjected to now and then. For example, a successful brand and a leader in its category like McDonald’s has to spend extra marketing resources for challenging litigations and Class action suits by say, Vegans. A vigilante group will never waste time and resources on going after say a Biggies Burger or a Burger Singh (yes these are Burger brands and competitors to McDonald’s in India)

My point is, getting subjected to Global Attention Surplus Disorder is a sign of India’s success. It means that India has arrived. In my opinion, China started suffering from this around the mid-2000s when its economy started firing on all cylinders and China became the so-called factory of the world. But that’s when coverage of its record on Human rights, Freedom of expression, Public Data accuracy, Transparency Index, Corruption, etc. also started finding its way into the global media regularly. There is not a single day when there is no negative story on China these days in reputed publications like The Economist, The Washington Post, The New York Times and so on. China has been suffering from GASD for many years; India has just started.

In the coming days, weeks, months and years, you will see India being in the eye of the storm frequently and more often. We have to get used to this excessive attention from the world. As a country, and as a government we should put processes in place to handle PR storms of varied nature from here on that will ensure less Governmental time on such issues. At the same time, we should pick the right battles to fight. Otherwise, we could get into a vicious distractive cycle. India is at the cusp of making history. Focus on the job at hand is more important than getting waylaid by distractions.

As Cricket experts would say, in seaming conditions and turning tracks, a batsman should know which ball or bowler to attack and more importantly which to be “well left”!

Image courtesy: Hans India

Jet Airways – Positioning lessons from its crash landing!

On Wednesday last week, as I was queuing up to board an Air India flight to Delhi, I could see the tarmac at the Mumbai airport lined up with idling aircrafts of Jet Airways, whose operations were being cut down by the hour. Eventually, by evening the airlines shut down its operations completely, albeit “temporarily” as per the company’s statement. And in a twinge of irony, the last flight was a Jet Connect flight from Amritsar to Delhi that landed in Mumbai in the wee hours of Thursday.  I say “in a twinge of irony” because one of the reasons for the airline to get caught in turbulent weather, was its many experiments in positioning wrongly so, trying to compete with budget/low-cost airlines with Jetlite, Jet Connect and so on, when it hit financial air pockets way back in 2009 and later.

Unlike this generation, people born before the pre-liberalisation took their 1st flights when they started working! So did I. Way back in the early 1990’s for the initial few years, it was all Indian Airlines for work related trips. Though Indian Airlines in that period wasn’t bad, when Jet Airways burst into the scene, post opening of the sky along with other private airlines like East-West, Damania, Modiluft and so on, it brought in a whiff of fresh air. I remember vividly those times. The airports with inadequate infrastructure to handle the explosion of airlines and traffic, by and large resembled railway terminus’s and bus stations with multiple loud announcements of arrivals, departures and boarding calls.  “Chaotic” was an oft-repeated description of airports, then.

Amidst all the initial slew of private players, only Jet survived. It is clear that Naresh Goyal, the original promoter of Jet Airways had mastered the one core competency that mattered to excel in business in India – that is of “managing the environment”! But, I must admit that apart from managing the environment, Goyal could get another aspect of business right. That is of managing customer needs and experience well.

In those initial days, –  I am referring to the mid 90’s, Jet Airways experience was really out of the world,  particularly for frequent flyers. You could tele-check in and get your favourite leg space seats without much of an issue. Upgrade vouchers could actually be used to upgrade to business class even at the airport while checking in. There was a wide variety of meal options apart from just Veg and Non Veg. In fact for breakfast, in Vegetarian, they used to have South Indian and North Indian choices!  Dinners were 3 course meals. Hot and cold towels were provided even to Economy passengers! You could redeem your award tickets without much fuss and disappointment. In the initial few years, one needn’t pay even the taxes for award tickets (That changed pretty soon). With fares almost same as of other airlines, there was no reason unless otherwise the flight was full, to look at alternative airlines! I can say that from a user perspective, it was truly a golden era for Jet Airways!

The golden run for the airline continued in the 1st decade of this century, but with conditions attached. This was when it became a market leader by way of market share and leadership pangs started catching up. But still, due to its superior service and its On-time record, it was business travellers’ first resort.

The advent of low cost or budget airlines in the scene in India somewhere around 2006, must be one watershed moment in the history of Jet Airways. Captain Gopinath, the founder of Air Deccan redefined airline business in India with his no frills, low-cost offering exemplified by R.K.Laxman’s “common man” as the brand mascot. By lowering air fares to the extent of making it cheaper than train fare, Gopinath ushered in a whole set of middle class travellers into flying. In doing so, Gopinath with Air Deccan became of subjects of case studies in B-schools. The whole landscape of air traffic changed so fast in that period that, Air Deccan with its mindless pricing strategy, ended up disrupting itself and few other airlines on the way.

The global recession of 2008 and the cost consciousness that ensued among corporates world over, brought the curtains down on the party of the expensive, premium priced, full service airlines. In India, it meant Jet and Kingfisher who were truly premium, full service airlines at that time. This is where, I feel Jet was caught in the wrong foot. When it started losing market share to low-cost air lines and new entrants like Indigo, Go Air, Spicejet… Jet decided to pursue its own “budget airline” strategy which in my mind was a big mistake. Extending the brand is a trap which many companies fall into, with their eyes wide open.  Here, Jet Airways, hither to a market leader with a full service offering and impeccable service reputation, decided to extend its brand and launch a budget airline called Jetlite and then later Jet Connect. At the outset, it seemed like a smart strategy to prevent losing market share to the newly launched low-cost carriers, that too in those prevalent muted global economic conditions.

In the process, what happened was a systematic dilution of the brand equity of Jet Airways and all it stood for. In the name of cutting costs, service offerings were trimmed. It was no longer a frequent flyer’s delight. Service started falling apart. I started seeing the writing on the wall sometime in 2011/12. You could never get a seat of your choice even when you web checked in early! Choice of food became limited. For a flight taking off at 7.30 pm, instead of dinner, a snack meal was beginning to be served! Even the After mint (post meal mouth freshener) which was served in Jet Airways in the beginning, which became so popular that it was sold in super markets and stores as Jet Mukhwas suddenly disappeared from the in-flight meal. Here, I must add that I have seen many passengers asking for extra sachets of the same and hoarding them to their homes!  Award ticket redemption process now online, became a farce. There were just few seats for award tickets in a flight and you would never get them. If you redeem award tickets for your family, seldom you will get confirmation of the same while you book. Upgrade vouchers became just pieces of paper because upgrades were limited to few fares.

In the midst of all this, Jet’s financial woes only multiplied. A mistimed acquisition of Sahara Airlines only worsened the situation. Few quarters back, realising its original mistake of taking the budget airline route, Jet jettisoned its low-cost brands and decided to stick to just its full service offering. Considering the fact that global economy had revived, I thought that it was a wise move and hoped that Jet will soon be back to its glory!  Well, it did not. The low-cost hangover continued. The pricing was of full service. But the service was of budget airline! Can you imagine as recently as in Feb, on a 5 and a half hour flight from Mumbai to Singapore, there were no personal screens and one had to really sleep through to kill time? And my co-passenger who requested for a glass of water got it after reminding the crew for the same at least 3 times! And of late dinner served in Jet Airways resembled more like junk street food! And I can only say that Jet’s frequent flyer programme – Jet Privilege which was once upon a time really world-class, is a pale shadow of its former self! Jet Privilege was such a strong brand that Goyal hived that off as a separate entity and monetised it. Even that infusion didn’t help to improve the user experience, though. Keeping the financial troubles aside, I was of the opinion that Jet was sinking as a brand anyway! And the culprit was its positioning! Was it a full service airline with offerings of a budget airline or was it a budget airline that was overpriced??

What if, had Jet continued to stay the course of a full service airline?

What if, in that period when low-cost airlines were mindlessly cutting prices, had Jet focused on “business value flyers” and on superior service?

What if, had Jet went after bottom line instead of preserving market share in that turbulent economic period?

So many what ifs! As I said, in hindsight, pontification is easy. But this hold lessons for companies for the future. After all, business cycles repeat themselves.

Having said that, singling out Jet is also a tad unfair. Airline business globally is a tough business to wade through. One that requires continuous infusion of Capex and which sucks up huge Opex. Only airlines that have thrived are those protected by state monopolies or those who have got their positioning and cost efficiencies correct. In India, the woes of Airline industry have been compounded by high taxes, fluctuating fuel prices, high interest rates and crony capitalist policies. In the history of Airline Industry, Jet is only the latest to bite the dust. Before, we had East-West, Modiluft, Damania, Air Deccan, Sahara, Kingfisher, Alliance Air and myriad other smaller airlines which all exited the scene in one pretext or the other! And we all know how Air India has managed to pull through while being in ICU for so many years.  And it is also clear that the other airlines are all clutching at straws and managing to stay afloat. That must really beg some critical policy related questions among the policy makers in India. While on the one hand trying to expand air travel to smaller towns in India, is the current Aviation policy regime really business friendly?

Seeing an Indian brand, which was once upon a time close to world-class fold up, is really unfortunate. Hope wisdom and luck prevails and we soon see Jet get its Jetwings of yore!

Image courtesy: https://www.thenational.ae