Air Pegasus to raise Rs 200 crore

Air Pegasus will raise Rs 200 crore capital through angel investments or External Commercial Borrowing (ECB), Managing Director Shyson Thomas said today.
"We have many options open. We have completed our initial rounds of discussion, and right now, we are in the middle rounds of discussion. We are looking at ECB... And also we are discussing with some angel investors," he told reporters here.
Asked whether the airline is looking at raising capital through IPO, he said, "we are not going for IPO because the airline needs to complete three years of operations."
The capital raised would be utilised to expand the airline's fleet size and connect more locations this calender year.

To a question whether the company intends to dispense with discounts, Thomas said the airline wouldn't do away with it and its bottomline is not getting affected much.
"I don't think we will be doing away with it...Wewant 100 per cent seat bookings. We would like more people tofly, that is our purpose because markets require growth," he said.

"We are not operating in well-established markets. The strategy isquite different here," he said.
"The airline does not roll out discounts for commercial purposes. How much of bottomline is getting affected? It is not much," he added.
On the update on offers including cheaper flights to startup companies, Thomas said as many as 30startups have registered with the airline.

However, the airline's primary intention was not to earn money out of them initially, but to support them in their growth, Thomas said.
The company is expected to add two more aircraft within a month and had ordered five more to connect destinations including Goa, Puducherry, Kochi and Vijaywada,Thomas said.
Air Pegasus currently operates flights to Hubbabll, Thiruvananthapuram, Madurai, Mangaluru, Chennai and Kadapa andplans to scale up its services to connect Tuticorin, Belagavi, Rajahmundry, Puducherry and Tirupati, he said.
Replying to a query, airline Director Ashwin Thomassaid Bengaluru and Chennai are good markets for catering to flying services to employees and honchos of startup companies.

Asked whether the airline plans to implement thescheme for IT companies, Ashwin said it was eager toextend to smaller and bigger companies.
A lot of IT employees and their bosses travel in the airline on routes where there was literally no competition fromrival airlines.