Leadership Team

Vinay is an accomplished Chief Executive Officer with an established track record of corporate transformations of large, multifaceted international technology and aviation enterprises. He has held leadership roles with American Airlines, Sabre Inc., Delta Air Lines, Jet Airways and GoAir.

Vinay has successfully led global organisations with over 20,000 employees in arguably the world’s most competitive markets, overcoming highly complex and diverse challenges across infrastructure, sales, distribution, technology, human resource, operations, and customer service. He is recognized for consistently delivering margin expansion, revenue growth and operational excellence while developing platforms of world-class customer service and employee engagement.

As Founder and CEO of Akasa Air, Vinay works closely with the Board of Directors in developing and implementing the strategic, operating, and financial direction of the company.

Belson is an award-winning senior management professional with over 23 years of aviation experience.

He spearheaded a successful global - eCommerce, digital, social, product, and voice of guest strategy including heading marketing and loyalty at Jet Airways. He built from grounds up the eCommerce business, scaling annual revenue to USD 400+ mio. Prior to joining Akasa Air, Belson led VFS Global’s marketing, customer experience, quality, and information services across 147 countries.

Belson has pioneered various industry-first initiatives in Indian aviation including introduction of eTickets, online payments and self-service check-in and has been awarded for his contribution to eCommerce and digital marketing.

At Akasa Air, Belson is responsible for marketing & brand management, corporate communications, public relations, loyalty, product design, ancillary services, eCommerce, and customer experience. Belson is also responsible for training & service standards definition at Akasa Air.

Ankur joined Akasa prior to the start of its commercial operations as its Chief Financial Officer. He has close to two decades of experience in various fields of Finance including Fund Raising (both debt and equity), Strategic Finance and Sustainability.

 

Prior to joining Akasa, Ankur spent nine years working at IndiGo Airlines. He joined IndiGo as Head - Financial Planning and was a core member of IndiGo’s Initial Public Offer followed by Institution Placement Program. Over the course of his tenure at IndiGo, he also headed Investor Relations, Aviation and non-Aviation Insurance, Treasury and Corporate Planning & Analysis functions. He was also responsible to set up the Sustainability practice at IndiGo. In his last role, he was Vice President - Treasury and Investor Relations and was part of the Senior Leadership team of IndiGo.

 

Ankur is a management graduate from Indian School of Business and an engineering graduate from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati.

 

At Akasa, as Chief Financial Officer, Ankur is responsible for managing the Company’s financial planning and strategy.

Praveen is a business leader with a career spanning 20+ years. He has held several leadership positions covering Global Operations in fast paced and dynamic consumer focused businesses.

Having worked both in India and overseas, he has grown revenues and contributed to increasing profitability and margins, while leading Corporate Planning & Strategy, Alliances & Partnerships, Pricing & Revenue Management, Cargo Sales and Ancillary Revenues.

 

He has helmed large teams in developing new markets, implementing customer acquisition strategies, and fostering global alliances and partnerships. Praveen is especially adept in integrating long term business strategy with annual business plans, managing large scale complex operations, managing, and leading change, and building high performance teams.

 

Praveen is the Chief Commercial Officer at Akasa Air.

Bhavin is a seasoned Chartered Accountant with 21+ years of experience. He was with PwC for 9 years and worked on financial due diligence projects across sectors like airlines, hospitality, travel insurance, real estate, education, and media.

During his time at Jet Airways, he managed Strategy & Projects, working in the MIS team and the Office of the CEO. He later worked as a CFO of a travel protection company managing financial reporting, FP&A, treasury, tax, audit, compliance, and strategy.

 

At Akasa, Bhavin is the Sr. Vice President and heads leasing, procurement, insurance and contracting functions

Neelu Khatri has over 25 years of professional experience and is an ex Indian Air Force Wing Commander from the privileged initial batch of women officers back in 1993.

​

She is a strong business leader with deep experience of handling P&L for global organisations like Honeywell in India. She worked in KPMG as a Director for more than 5 years in Civil Aviation and Aerospace industry and has published many thought leadership documents on the industry’s policies.​

 

At Akasa Air, Neelu is Senior VP and Head of Operations and is responsible for Operations Planning and Control, Airports, Maintenance and Engineering and Flight Operations.

 

Priya brings along extensive experience in private practice where she advised clients on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity transactions, government privatizations, capital markets and general corporate advice.

 

Prior to joining Akasa Air, she was the in-house General Counsel of IndiGo, where she was part of the eight-member Executive Committee and chaired the Internal Sexual Harassment Committee apart from being a member of the Compliance Committee. Prior to joining Indigo, Priya worked with Gibson Dunn’s Singapore office where she helped build the India practice for close to 8 years. Before her stint at Gibson Dunn, she worked with Jones Day in Singapore a position she took after working for five years at AZB & Partners in India.

 

Priya is a post-graduate in Law from the University of Delhi and is dual-qualified to practice law in India, England & Wales. Priya was recognised as “Woman Lawyer of the Year – In-House” for 2021 by Asian Legal Business.

 

Priya is the General Counsel & Chief Governance Officer at Akasa Air.

Ritu carries over 17 years of rich experience across multiple domains in HR, primarily in aviation. She holds the rich experience of working with two leading domestic airlines during their formative years. Her last assignment was with Vistara as AVP – Human Resources where she was heading the HR Business Partnering and Employee Engagement verticals.

 

Prior to that she has spent many years with IndiGo in their HR department working across multiple assignments. She truly believes in the power of a diverse and collaborative workplace brimming with fun and positivity. In addition to being a committed HR professional, she is an avid Diversity & Inclusion champion and a certified personal branding and executive presence coach. Ritu has done her MBA in Human Resources from one of the leading business schools in India.
Ritu is the Head of Human Resources at Akasa Air. 

Anand carries over 25 years of global consulting experience spanning multiple domains, primarily in the areas of Aviation, Data Science, Analytics, and IT. He has rich experience working with commercial teams of various airlines across the globe.

In his last stint, he oversaw the Revenue Management function at GoAir and helped them navigate their first foray into international markets. Anand has also successfully led digital transformation initiatives at large global organizations like Dell, CISCO and SCB.

A well-known and respected name in the Analytics space, he was named among the top Data Scientists in India and is also a published author in the field. Anand is also a successful entrepreneur, having taken a bootstrapped entity to financial exit.

 

Anand is the Chief Information Officer at Akasa Air.