Nervous jitters on the eve of a new business launch? Do not expect Captain Gorur Ramaswamy Iyengar Gopinath to show it, even if he has a bad case of them. Affable and easily approachable, Captain Gopi, as he is known around the country, was busy campaigning for a seat in Parliament even as he kept in touch on his ever-beeping Blackberry with the top management of his new venture: Deccan Express Logistics (DEL).

Parliament, however, was priority number one. The election had come– to use a phrase from the logisticsbusiness – “just in time” and Capt Gopi was unwilling to let the opportunity go. He had been deeply touched by“the brazen attacks of terrorism – the Mumbai attacks of 26/11 and many more– the communal attacks on communities across the country and those by the selfproclaimed moral brigades on helpless women”.

Unable to take it any longer, Capt Gopi jumped into the political fray firm in his belief that he needed to help a faltering nation he describes as “precariously close to becoming a failed state with a nation of weak citizens watching helplessly even as all that we cherish gets destroyed”.

The foray into politics, however, is another story. For Captain, sensitivity and action go hand in hand. The son of a village school teacher from a remote village in Karnataka, Capt Gopi is well aware of the dreams and aspirations of the common Indian. Hence, the desire to do something that would better the lives of the man on the street.

He has followed this path ever since he quit the strait-jacketed army life to start silk cultivation on a barren piece of land. It was, as he refers to it today, during an almost hour-long car journey from his home in the heart of the city to Bengaluru airport, a labour of love. He recalls the early days when he slept in a tent, bravingthe heat and rains. Even in those days of hard labour, he experimented withinnovative eco-friendly methods, guidedonly by his belief that he could make adifference. And, he did – the methods headopted got him the ‘Rolex InternationalAward’ in 1996.

Anyone else would have rested. Not Capt Gopi. Seizing the opportunities available, thanks to the atmosphere of liberalization, he fi rst started a helicopter charter company and on August 25, 2003, the country’s first no-frills airline, Air Deccan, capturing not only every Indian’s dream to fly but also bringing about a change – unlike any other nation had seen – in the aviation business.

Today, on the eve of another big-ticket launch – DEL, the end-to-end logistics solutions outfit – Capt Gopi cannot but contain his enthusiasm. DEL is a natural child of Air Deccan, he says with conviction. “In many senses it is a child of (Air) Deccan. I say it is a child of Deccan because of the nightmare and frustration of the logistics of (maintaining) Air Deccan (aircraft).”

He reveals that while running Air Deccan, it had become increasingly clear to him that there was a massive gap that needed to be plugged.“We had FedEx, we had UPS and Blue Dart/DHL. But their focus was taking India to the rest of the world, not bringing India to India,” he says.

And to ensure that DEL lives up to his own vision, he has put together a team of professionals with over 100 years of combined global and Indian express transportation and logistics experience to help him out. There is the iconic Ram Charan, for instance, whose duty will be to advise CEO Jude Fonseka (erstwhile FedEx) and the operations team.

Very like Captain Gopi. Every move is well thought-out and structured for maximum returns. It is not that he had not received proposals to start a cargo service from colleagues and friends in Air Deccan, but as he put it, “I did not want to take my eyes off (Air) Deccan at that time. I couldn’t even afford to blink, it was so critical, I was totally immersed in that business. I had no other life.”

Around that time, “many people told me,” says Capt Gopi, peering out from his car window to look at the rapidlychanging Bengaluru landscape, “Captain, they told me, we must start a cargo airline, let’s do something together… All the cargo freight forwarders came to us and said we will handle it for you.”

Ultimately it was an Airbus engine that was the spark, but the flame had already been lit in Capt Gopi’s mind.“Building a supply chain, all people will tell you, is an organisational capability along with a knowledge base,” he says. He had acquired knowledge about the way things moved, thanks to the circuitous path his engine spare had to take to travel from Delhi to Kolkata. And ironically, his lack of finances – he was operatingAir Deccan on the tightest of budgets – came in handy.

He learnt that airplane spares could reach Mumbai from anywhere in the world in 24 hours. But from Mumbai to reach any of the small airports touched by Air Deccan, like Rajamundhry, Ludhiana, Jammu or even Guwahati would often take anywhere from a week to ten days. Express majors like FedEx would bring spares to Mumbai, but from there it was anybody’s guess when it would reach its destination. For Air Deccan and Capt Gopi, logistics became a crucial issue since Deccan’s 45 aircraft which were serving 67 cities.

With that thought doing circles in his mind, his ‘eureka’ moment came soon after he sold his shares to Vijay Mallya’s Kingfi sher. “I think the timing was right,” he says. “I said,” he recounts, “my God, in this country you can’t move an enginefrom Delhi to Calcutta. While Chinahas 98 aircraft in cargo, Europe has 128in express logistics, but India has onlyabout five.

“A country as great as ours, with a US$1.1 billion emerging economy, growing at seven to eight per cent of the GDP, surely we should have had more aircraft. More so now with government’s policy of special economic zones where the policy now favours industry in rural areas. That is where the resources are, that is where the people are,” he says.

Only when these places are connected can the country get equitable economic growth, Capt Gopi believes. “Look,” he says, counting out examples on his fingers, “existing businesses are moving out of Mumbai into the interiors: Asea Brown Boveri has gone to Nasik, TVS is going to Mysore, Firodia has gone to Himachal Pradesh.” And then comes the clincher: “Jamnagar, Ludhiana, Rajamundhry, Coimbatore, Cochin…none of the cities ever sees a cargo aircraft.”

Convinced about his plans, Capt Gopi told himself, “You can’t go wrong”. Th e country, he says, needs such connectivity.“It is like arteries and veins pumping blood to the heart. The industry is the heart. That requires a supply chain. It takes only one part to go missing in that machinery, for all your production lines to come to a halt. Most industries that are automated require a supply chain and that automation requires better aircraft.”

Express logistics is not just delivering next day or overnight; express logistics is the ability to build a supply chain into industry both ways – supply and back. Simply put, it means that the parts and goods have to reach the manufacturer or consumer when they want it. So, Capt Gopi and DEL will be injecting adrenaline in the speed of the business cycle and increasing it by “15-20 or 30 times”.

The cost of logistics alone for any manufacturing industry in the country, says Capt Gopi is about 38 per cent. “A good supply chain brings it down by 20 per cent. That is what Deccan Logistics wants to do – build business, which is totally, virtually non-existent”.

He points out that he plans to cater to different spaces. Th e only space that express logistics has catered to until today, is high-value. But the votary of the Common Man wants to penetrate below that strata. “Since I have always felt the need to build the right environment for equitable growth in this country, one can’t do it well alone. If everybody does it together, you’ll do well.”

To ensure that millions of the middle class have the purchasing power, DEL is aiming to stimulate demand. A portion of each of DEL’s planes will be carrying goods from farmers, at lower than the usual rates. That, says Capt Gopi, is good business sense, “not just an altruistic thing. Good business becomes good if you make others do well. So, I want to allocate a portion of space for perishables.”

Always a hands-on person, Capt Gopinath has his own unique style of running the business, despite the fact he has fingers in many pies including DEL, Deccan Aviation (the helicopter charter unit), his farm where he now cultivates coconuts and sundry other crops, and much more.

He believes in delegating responsibilities. While at Air Deccan, the low-cost carrier company he founded, he knew that “two years down the line, I’d have the ability to set up another company. At some point, I understood that we’ll need a CEO, so that I could distance myself from the physical management of the company”. He got himself a CEO, who ran the outfit professionally.

As for DEL, it will certainly not be run “like old family-owned businesses… When you are a first generation entrepreneur,” advises Capt Gopi, “the only way you can grow in size and scale in three, four or five years is to dilute and bring in equity. You can build a company on a size which is scalable and have a societal impact.”

For the moment, however, DEL is concentrating on putting the brick and mortar in place. By the end of the year, the outfit will have six planes “and twice the reach of Blue Dart”, confides Capt Gopi. That will be achieved because Blue Dart’s focus is different.

“My focus is to integrate the smaller towns with the larger network in the metros. I’ve also created this hub-and-spoke with Nagpur as the hub. The reason I went to Nagpur is because the place is ideal for me and is also suitable for my overall strategy because it is in the centre of India. In two or at most two-and-a-half hours, DEL’s planes can reach the concerned cities,” he says with conviction.

Captain Gopinath knows that his aim of ensuring cargo deliveries across the country in a day would only be possible when international cargo aircraft start flying to Nagpur. But that is part of his long-term vision – which, he says, must be something that is reachable.

“My vision,” he points out “is a completely revolutionary one of doing business in the Indian context wherein the cost of manufacturing any product, and then the cost of sending it to the shelves, will be reduced dramatically.”