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A soaring flight plan: Bird Group eyes Air India's ground handling arm

The promoter-brothers, distant cousins to IndiGo's Rahul Bhatia, are eyeing Air India's ground handling subsidiary to augment their aviation services business even as they make a big play in EVs

Bird Group, aviation services business
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The Bird Group is one of the largest third-party ground-handling companies. AITSL, which does Air India’s ground handling business, would catapult the group into a dominant player in the game

Surajeet Das Gupta New Delhi
Their business interests often overlap, sometimes forcing them to compete head-on with their better-known distant cousin. So when the low-profile Delhi-based Bhatia brothers — Ankur and Gaurav — who run the aviation-to-hospitality Bird Group, hit the headlines for making a bid to buy out Air India with Spicejet promoter Ajay Singh a few weeks ago, many speculated that it was an ambitious (some said over-ambitious) attempt to get into an area where Rahul Bhatia, promoter of low-cost leader IndiGo Airlines, dominates the skies  

The IndiGo promoter does not only account for half the domestic airline market share but his group