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Industries such as aviation and hospitality have many silos within them and Aionos, the joint venture between Interglobe Enterprises (IGE) and Assago Group, is an attempt to bridge them and boost efficiencies using artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, Rahul Bhatia told Business Standard on Tuesday.
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Bhatia, the Group Managing Director of IGE, serves as the majority shareholder in India’s largest airline, IndiGo.
Additionally, IGE operates 21 hotels under the Ibis brand and runs a logistics company called Movin.
C P Gurnani, the former chief executive officer and managing director of Tech Mahindra, chairs the Assago Group.
Bhatia told the newspaper that entities like airport operators and service providers, such as ground handling companies or cargo centres, who collaborate with airport operators, have access to data among themselves, and there are avenues to enhance efficiency.
“How can you reduce turnaround time (time taken by plane at an airport between its arrival and next departure)?
“Airlines do what they do, can airports do something to help all of that?
“So it is an integrated approach. Right now, industry works in silos and I think we are all trying to bridge those silos and have integrated solutions for the industry,” he noted.
Aionos, wherein IGE will hold the majority shareholding, was launched on Tuesday in the presence of Gurnani and Bhatia.
IndiGo currently has 350 planes in its fleet.
It holds about 60 per cent share in the domestic air passenger market of the country.
He spoke about how AI-based predictive analysis can assist maintenance of planes.
“So, if you have understanding, and once you have enough information about the plane, or hundreds of planes that you fly, you should be able to predict that at a certain moment of time this part needs a replacement.
“It is about being proactive and not reactive and that improves the efficiency,” Bhatia said.
He said that he understands the issues that “plague” the aviation and hospitality industries in terms of customers and in terms of their systems.
He said there is a “lot of dialogue” with stakeholders in these sectors.
“We work with airports. Airports can share what their issues are,” he noted.
On AI in the hotel industry, he said: “Any industry that is suffering from legacy systems, clearly there is an opportunity to optimise it. We talk about airlines having legacy systems, hospitality is even more archaic.
“It is a couple of steps behind the aviation sector.
“Once you dig into it, you will find the opportunity.
“I think what Aionos of the world brings is the agility to take solutions to the market.”
Aionos will be headquartered in Singapore but it will have offices in the UK, Europe, North America as well as India.
Gurnani and Bhatia did not reveal the amount of investment that they plan to invest in Aionos in FY25.
Gurnani said that travel, transportation, logistics, and hospitality are booming in Asia not just due to the economy but also due to population growth.
“Therefore, our focus would be Asia,” he added.
