Meet N Chandrasekaran's super team who sealed Air India's deal with Airbus, Boeing

Air India’s latest bid to acquire 470 aircraft from Airbus and Boeing is being termed historical and is expected to put the once glorious airline in the league of top domestic and global air carriers. But little do people know that the rebuilding of India’s flagship airline is being carried out by a team of top executives from different Tata group companies who were assembled together by the top brass, including Chairman N Chandrasekaran, to create the Air India Transformation Team.

The negotiations with aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus were led by Nipun Aggarwal and Yogesh Agarwal, former top executives at Tata Sons who were brought on board Air India Transformation Team to overhaul the airlines.

Nipun Aggarwal

Nipun Aggarwal sits at the top of the Air India Transformation Team. He led the negotiations with the aircraft manufacturers alongside some of his co-workers from the team built to turn around the erstwhile dysfunctional airlines.

Aggarwal wrote in a LinkedIn post that the total order was of 840 aircraft and "Yogesh Agarwal, Pranay Todi, Naman Jain, and Jinesh Papdiwal" were instrumental in finalising the deal. 

Aggarwal, who is an alumnus of IIM Calcutta, was appointed the Chief Commercial and Transformation officer of the airline in April 2022 by Chandrasekaran, within three months of the Tata group bringing Air India under its fold. In the order of his appointment, Chandrasekaran noted, “The new appointees will exercise the powers of functional/departmental heads as per the delegation of authority. We wish them all the very best in their new role.”

Before this gig, Aggarwal was managing investments for the Tata Sons in the capacity of the Senior Vice President.

Soon after joining Air India, Aggarwal led the team that was set out to find the next CEO of the airline, and aviation sector veteran Campbell Wilson was brought on board in May of the same year.

Since his appointment as the transformation team lead, Aggarwal has been laying out the groundwork for the reversal of the airline's performance.

Under his leadership of the transformation team, Air India signed up Spanish IT company Amadeus to improve customer service on board the airline. “Amadeus Altéa PSS is the first of many such initiatives to transform Air India," Aggarwal said after the announcement.

Over the past six months, the airline also added multiple routes to improve the utilization of the existing aircrafts. Aggarwal is also responsible for building Air India Express(AIE), a subsidiary of Air India that specialises in low cost airfares. He is on the board of AIE and is overseeing investments in the company.

Yogesh Agarwal

Yogesh Agarwal, who joined Nipun Aggarwal at the negotiations with Airbus and Boeing, was transferred to the Air India Transformation Team in June 2022 from Tata Sons, where he served as an Assistant Vice President. 

Agarwal, who is an alumnus of Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), joined Air India as the Head of Aircraft Acquisition and the Transformation Program Manager. 

He is also a member of Tata Administrative Service, or TAS. It is an elite professional program at the group companies where managers and administrators are put on cross-functional, cross-business, and cross-location assignments. 

Agarwal is considered to be instrumental in shaping Vihaan. AI,  the air carrier’s transformation plan revealed in September 2022. The plan outlined that the airline aims at achieving a 30 per cent market share in the Indian aviation sector in the next five years, and would add multiple domestic as well as international routes. 

This meant that the airline had to expand its fleet size including a combination of both narrow-bodied planes, for short routes and wide-bodied aircrafts for long routes.

This ambition set by the airline led to months-long negotiations at London's St James Court, a hotel owned by the Tata group. Sources told Business Today that despite it being the first time Aggarwal and Agarwal’s team negotiated with aircraft manufacturers, they got the airlines a sweet deal where the planes were bought at a significant discount. Business Today has reached out to Nipun Aggarwal and Yogesh Agarwal for comments on the deal and will update the copy when they respond.

Also Read: Is Air India's mega deal with Airbus and Boeing of 470 or 840 aircraft? - BusinessToday

Also Read: Ticket size of Air India's record order for almost 500 Airbus, Boeing jets could be roughly $110 bn: Mark Martin - BusinessToday