Welcome Back, Air India: Ratan Tata As Tatas Regain Control Of Airline After 68 Years
Mumbai: Welcoming back Air India, Tata Group chairman Ratan N Tata on Friday tweeted an old picture of the company’s former chairman JRD Tata getting down from an Air India aircraft, and said, ‘Welcome back, Air India”, after Tata Sons won the bid for the airline and regained its control 68 years after its nationalisation.”
This comes after Tata Sons regained control of Air India after almost 70 years of winning the bid to acquire the airline at Rs 18,000 crores beating Spicejet’s Ajay Singh. Also Read: Tata Sons Wins Bid For Acquiring National Carrier Air India At Rs 18,000 Crores
“The Tata Group winning the bid for Air India is great news! While admittedly it will take considerable effort to rebuild Air India, it will hopefully provide a very strong market opportunity to the Tata group’s presence in the aviation industry,” Tata tweeted.
“On an emotional note, Air India, under the leadership of Mr JRD Ttata had one time, gained the reputation of being one of the most prestigious airlines in the world. Tatas will have the opportunity of regaining the image and reputation it enjoyed in earlier years. Mr JRD Tata would have been overjoyed if he was in our midst today,” he said in the statement he tweeted.
https://twitter.com/RNTata2000/status/1446431109122650118?s=20
Announcing this, DIPAM Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said on Friday that the Tata group has cited an enterprise value of Rs 18,000 crore to emerge as the winner of the financial bid.
“We received two financial bids on September 15… The panel of ministers approved the winning bid. Tata is winning,” Pandey said. It marks the return of Air India to its founders after a gap of 68 years.
He further added, “TATA presented a winning bid of Rs 18,000 crores. The transaction is expected to close by end of December 2021.”
Air India was originally established by Tata in 1932 as “Tata Airlines”. The great industrialist J.R.D. Tata, who was also India’s first licensed pilot, founded the airline. In the initial phase, the airline used to ferry mail between Mumbai (then Bombay) and Karachi (now in Pakistan) in British India. The airline began commercial operations in 1940. In 1946, the aviation division of Tata Sons was listed as Air India and in 1948, Air India International was launched with flights to Europe.
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