IndiGo co-founder Rakesh Gangwal's family sells another 4% stake in airline

IndiGo has emerged as India's largest airline with a 56 per cent market share in 2022, followed by Tata's Air India, Vistara and Air Asia, that control a quarter of India's aviation market. As the national carrier Air India returned to its original parent firm Tata through privatisation, IndiGo's co-founder stepped down from the firm's board last year. Now his wife Shobha Gangwal has sold her 4 per cent stake in IndiGo's parent firm, worth Rs 2,944 crore, on the open market.

A year after Rakesh Gangwal announced that he would slowly cut down stake in the airline, Shobha sold 1.56 crore shares at a 5 per cent discount for Rs 1,887 per unit. The sale also bogged down IndiGo's shares, which closed the day in the red, after falling 4.5 per cent. Till December 2022, promoter groups held a 72 per cent stake in IndiGo's parent Interglobe, and the Gangwal family trust had a 33.76 per cent share.

Before this, Gangwal and his wife had together sold 2.74 per cent shares of the airline in September 2022, and since then its shares had bounced back by 7 per cent, while its revenue surged by 61 per cent for the October-December quarter. From a loss in the quarter ending September, IndiGo took off towards a profit of more than Rs 1,400 crore in Q3, thanks to penty up domestic demand.