HYDERABAD: From dreaming to be a pilot to owning an airlines company, Kanika Tekriwal has come a long way. The CEO of JetSetGo Aviation Services Pvt Ltd has fought all odds, including cancer, to soar high. We caught up with her at the ongoing Wings India Expo 2022, where she is currently showcasing her Legacy 600 VT-SFU and Hawker XP 800 VT-POP.
“I had wanted to become a pilot since I was four years old. I come from a typical Marwadi business family where girls aren’t allowed to work, forget about being a pilot. I convinced them to allow me to pursue design and moved to Mumbai. While interning at a design company, I told my boss about my passion for aviation. He immediately asked me if I would help him set up his aviation company and that’s where it all started. After working there for a while, I moved to London and pursued aviation from scratch. I was 16 at the time,” Kanika shares.
But destiny had other plans, she had to come back to India sooner than she had expected. “I was diagnosed with cancer and could not work. I had to pack my bags and return. I beat cancer after a year and that was what convicted me to start JetSetGo — all because life gave me another chance,” she adds.
Once she knew this was her calling, Kanika fought all odds, especially her parents, to set up her own company. Today, her company operates and manages 28 aircraft and four helicopters of seven different kinds, like the Global 6000, Hawker Beechcraft 750, Cessna Caravan, Piaggio Avanti, Bombardier Challenger 850 and the Falcon 2000 Easy, among others.
After recovering from cancer, Kanika was back in form to be the go-getter. She applied for jobs, but was rejected. “People worried that I would fall ill again or even die post-cancer. That’s when I decided to start something of my own. I started an online booking platform, the word JetSetGo stuck in my head and I drew the logo on a tissue paper and it was good to go. We expected rich plane owners to list their planes and customers to book them from our platform, but our first flight never took off as the pilot didn’t show up. I realised that a booking platform solves only half the problems. Slowly, we became an aircraft management company and once our charter demand exceeded the supply available, we decided to buy our own airplanes and there was no looking back since,” she says.
The road to being a CEO didn’t come easy to Kanika. “When we created an app for our company, my father joked about it being a gaming app. Nobody took me seriously, I still remember when I went to my first sales meeting, I walked into a big conference room, and I was the last person to enter the room. One of them looked at me and said, ‘Excuse me, miss, can you serve everyone tea and coffee?’ I wanted to cry, but I mustered courage and told him why I was there,” she shares, adding that the biggest challenge has been that the aviation industry is dominated by older people and it has not been disrupted.
Despite reaching the top of the ladder, not every day is a celebration for Kanika. Self-motivation is her mantra on days things aren’t rosy. She says, “Some days are really hard, on some days I wake up to news about some issue with an aircraft, bad weather, customers screaming, catering gone wrong. Sadly, these days happen very frequently, at least three to four days a month. But while it can get difficult to get out of bed, I know I have to keep going and put on a smile. It takes a lot of self-motivation where I remind myself that I’m doing this because I love it and that I want to change the world.”