Sanjay Ghodawat Group Targets ₹15,000 Crore Topline By 2030, With Aviation Business Contributing ₹6,000 Crore

Mumbai: The Sanjay Ghodawat Group, which operates a regional airline under the brand name Star Air, is targeting a topline of Rs 15,000 crore by 2030, with its aviation business contributing as much as Rs 6,000 crore during this period.The Kolhapur-based diversified group, which has a presence in sectors such as aviation, real estate, textiles, retail, FMCG and wind energy, among others, is planning to take its various businesses public in the next 2-5 years, its Managing Director, Shrenik Ghodawat has said.

In an exclusive interaction with PTI, Ghodawat said: "We are targeting a topline of about Rs 15,000 crores by 2030. Of this, as much as Rs 6,000 crore is expected to come from the aviation business." The Group known for its various companies such as, Ghodawat Realty, Ghodawat Consumer Ltd, Sanjay Ghodawat University, Sanjay Ghodawat Retail Mart, Ghodawar Textiles, has a topline of Rs 3,500 crore, and the aviation vertical revenue was around Rs 650 crore last year.Ghodawat said the company plans to invest Rs 500 crore in the aviation business in the next two years.

Ruling out any switch to a budget carrier model, from a regional airline permit, he said, "We are a low-cost carrier focusing on regional connectivity. And for the next five years, that is what it is going to remain. We feel that there is still a tremendous amount of potential. And our competition is not the top two national carriers of the country, but actually is with trains and buses, inevitably."

"Today, if you look at our network strategy also, 65 per cent of our routes are under the regional air connectivity scheme, Udan and the remaining 35 per cent are non-Udan. And going forward, slowly, we are trying to bring this mix down. We will be launching more and more commercial routes. So, this mix will go down to about 70 per cent commercial and 30 per cent Udan routes," he said.He further noted that other businesses, such as consumer and education verticals, will fetch Rs 3,000 crore and Rs 1,000, respectively, among others.

In the FMCG business, the company plans to focus on launching more products with an eye on customers in the new age, Gen Z and millennials, as well as the Gen Alpha segment.Star Air has already raised Rs 150 crore as part of the Rs 350-crore Series B funding from a consortium of marquee investors, including Micro labs Ltd, and Deepak Agarwal of Bikaji Foods."Another Rs 200-crore we will be raising next year. The balance will come through our internal accruals. But we will be raising more funds, more equity next year. And that will lead to some level of dilution from the current ecosystem," he said.

The fresh capital is to be used for expanding the airline's fleet and route network, strengthening Non-Scheduled Operator Permit operations, and enhancing its MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) capabilities, he said."These are the only two modes of fundraise that we have done. And recently now with the Star Air thing, we have looked at private capital, which is through private equity and family offices. And we will now start exploring institutional capital as well. And eventually, of course, the goal would be to try and take each of these businesses public," he said.

Within the next 24-60 months, we are targeting different companies to come out with IPO at different levels, he said.In the consumer business, we are already doing about Rs 1,500 crore in revenue and the target is to take it to about Rs 3,000 crore in the next 3-5 years, while in the education vertical, we do about close to Rs 300 crore in topline and the company has a target to take it to about Rs 1,000 crore in this period, he said.

At a group level, he said, "what we are now looking at is something as a concept, which we call as a 5x5x -- five times growth in the next five years."That's something that we have created as a vision for our 2030 ecosystem within the group. If you look at all our businesses now, whether it's the consumer, retail, aviation, real estate, education vertical, all of these ecosystems are now focusing on a calculated and assertive level of growth," he said. 

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