Zoom Air plans expansion with Rs100 crore

Zoom Air, operated by Zexus Air Services Pvt. Ltd, commenced operations in February last year. Currently, it has three Bombardier CRJ-200LR aircraft serving routes in the Delhi-Jabalpur-Kolkata sector. Now it plans to offer new routes to North East India under the government’s regional connectivity scheme (RCS).

In April, the airline will add two more Bombardier CRJ-200LR aircraft to its fleet, and three of its five aircraft will be used exclusively on the RCS routes.

This expansion will require about Rs100 crore in financing.

In an interview, Zoom Air’s CEO and Managing Director, Koustav Dhar said “The airline, which is in advanced stage of talks with investors and private equity firms, hopes to raise this money before the end of the current fiscal period”. The airline will sell a 30% equity stake to investors in 2018 and hopes to sell at least 15% equity before March 31st.

Koustav Dhar said the airline has been granted six networks and twelve routes under the RCS-2 scheme and will fly the first of the new routes from Kolkata to Tejpur by March 15th. He said “We are looking at connecting Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and other states in the region with Kolkata and Guwahati as hubs”.

As well as domestic flights, Zoom Air will start international operations later this year with flights to neighboring countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. For these routes the airline will purchase 4 Bombardier CRJ-900, 94-seater aircraft in Q4 2018.

At the same time, it will acquire some sea planes and fly them under the RCS. Dhar said, “We are currently looking at geographies like West Bengal, Assam and Orissa for operating sea planes”.