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Who is Rakesh Gangwal?
Rakesh Gangwal, the co-founder of India’s largest airlines IndiGo, is an airline veteran whose family owns nearly 37 per cent stake in InterGlobe Aviation, the parent outfit of budget airline IndiGo.
Early life
Rakesh Gangwal was born in 1953 and completed his schooling from Don Bosco (Park Circus), Kolkata and Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 1975. He went on to do his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Rakesh Gangwal's career
Rakesh Gangwal's association with the aviation industry began in September 1980, when he was an associate with Booz Allen & Hamilton Inc. He then went on to join United Airlines where he worked as a manager, strategic planning and he went on to become the CEO of US Airways Group from 1998 until his resignation in 2001. After that, Gangwal was the chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Worldspan Technologies from 2003 to 2007.
IndiGo
Gangwal cofounded IndiGo, headquartered outside Delhi, with Rahul Bhatia (also a billionaire) in 2006 with one aircraft.
However, the duo had a bitter fallout in 2009 over corporate governance issues.
Rakesh Gangwal has resigned from the board as non-executive, non-independent director with immediate effect on Friday and is planning to cut his stake in the airline over the next five years.
On 4 February, IndiGo's board unanimously approved the appointment of its co-founder Rahul Bhatia as the managing director with immediate effect.
Latest Updates on Rakesh Gangwal
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Shares of IndiGo finished at Rs 1,986 apiece, down 2.6 per cent over its previous close. Goldman Sachs is the investment bank handling the share sale
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None of the investors lined up by the banks working on billionaire Rakesh Gangwal's sale of part of his family's stake in IndiGo got any shares in the block trade as a result of slippage
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Stake sale being brokered by three investment banks, says another source; Gangwal and his group currently own 36.6% in InterGlobe Aviation, Bhatia's camp owns 38.17%