Tata’s Air India win to Zee-Sony deal: 2021, year that was for businesses
ROUND TRIP
With a Rs 18,000-crore bid, the Tatas were back in the Air India cockpit this October, 68 years after the airline they founded in 1932 was nationalised. The deal marked the end of years of struggle to privatise the heavily indebted state carrier. This was also the first privatisation in India in almost two decades. The Jawaharlal Nehru government had in 1953 paid Rs 2.8 crore for the carrier — the country’s first commercial airline.
OPEN SKIES
India’s Covid-battered aviation industry will have two more airlines next year, with stock market investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala’s Akasa Air getting a no-objection certificate from the civil aviation ministry in October andJet Airways’ revival plan in place.
