The saga of Jet Airways saw an unexpected upturn yesterday.
A consortium of investors consisting of Kalrock Capital and entrepreneur Murari Lal Jalan officially won the bid to take over the airline, making them the new owners of Jet Airways.
Kalrock Capital is a London-based financial advisory and asset management firm, which focuses on real estate, venture capital, and special situations.
Jalan is an Indian, UAE-based entrepreneur with sizeable investments in many industries including tourism and real estate, according to CNBC-TV18.
However, neither of the new investors seem to have a background in aviation.
Kalrock Capital and Jalan plan to invest $136 million into Jet Airways over the next five years, to aid the airline’s revival with new management and the acquisition of assets.
While it’s still unclear how Jet Airways would resume in the skies, a board-member of Kalrock Capital told CNBC-TV18 about their plans of restarting the airline as a full-service one. “Our plan is to be a full-service airline. So we will start with domestic, we already have a route plan in mind for domestic, and will go international as well depending on the slot allocation,” he told the news channel.
The crisis-hit airline had announced its temporary shutdown back in April 2019; thereby leaving more than 20,000 employees unemployed and grounding its 97 aircraft. Jet Airways went into bankruptcy in June 2019 after it failed to repay its mounting debt of $1.2 billion.
Vistara acquired 16 aircraft from the fleet of temporarily shut Jet Airways. Spicejet and Air India came to the rescue of the jobless employees, by hiring 500 and 150 employees including pilots, cabin crew, technical and other ground staff, respectively.
