Will fly in India if the numbers stack up: Branson

Richard Branson, founder-chairman of the Virgin Group, the most flamboyant corporate figure in the world in an exclusive interview to CNBC-TV18 said he remains attracted to India but he does not have any plans at the moment to enter the Indian skies. However, Branson also added that whenever Virgin Atlantic decides to enter India he would like to partner someone like the Tata's.

He is not looking at an option of picking up a stake in an existing carrier and if he does decide to enter India, he would like to do what Tony Fernandez of AirAsia did, which is start an greenfiled airline Below is an excerpt of his exclusive interview with CNBC-TV18’s Sunanda Jayaseelan Branson: I would love to fly domestically one day inside India. We flied from Delhi to London and back and from Mumbai now to London as well. It would be great one day to connect those flights with the Virgin domestic service. We are going to have to decide whether the market is a little bit too overly occupied at the moment, but we will explore it. Hopefully one day Virgin will fly domestically. Q: In a previous interview done in about 2007, you said you could possibly look at domestic market in India given that the market conditions improve. Given the recent policy decisions about opening up of the Indian skies’, what are your own thoughts about how the market is looking for you? Branson: All I can say at this stage is we do have somebody looking at it. If we can make the figures stack up, we would love to do it. There have been some spectacular failures of people in the domestic market and we don’t fail, so we wouldn’t want to do it and make a mistake. However, if we can make the figures stack up you will see Virgin one day in the Indian domestic market. Virgin is very unlikely to buy into established carrier. So, if we were to do something in India, it is more likely that we do it from scratch and start from scratch – that is the way we build most of our companies. Also the fact that we would be allowed to own 49 percent makes that possible. Q: Talking about building an airline from scratch, a friend of yours Tony Fernandes has just announced a tie up with the Tata’s to set up an airline and that is an interesting business model because you have a foreign airline that is coming in into India to set up a domestic service. Do you have any comments on that model? Looking at it, would you say that you could possibly expect more foreign airlines to do that possibly? Branson: I take my hats off to Tony Fernandes for doing that and Tata is a wonderful partner for him. If Virgin was to do it, we would have to find a local partner and because we would only be allowed to own 49 percent.