As per a Reuters report, the proposed conditions, which would be negotiated with Air India’s majority owner Tata Sons, could contain greater board voting power and requirements for the Indian carrier to narrow its losses.

Temasek, Singapore Airlines’ majority shareholder, is looking to stay away from the entire process. Neither would it provide the capital itself nor intervene in the carrier’s decisions concerning Air India.

While Air India is seeking about USD 1.5 billion in fresh equity from its owners, majority holder Tata had already approved a USD 1.1 billion infusion, representing its pro-rata share. Singapore Airlines, on the other hand, holds the remaining 25.1% stake in the former state-owned full-service carrier.

In a statement, Singapore Airlines said its board would carefully evaluate any request for additional capital, taking into account Air India’s business strategy, the group’s operating cash flow, and its other capital requirements.

Singapore Airline’s tough stance also comes amid the airline facing growing pressure back home to justify the increase in its investment in Air India, which posted a USD 2.33 billion loss in the financial year ended March, weighing directly on the Singaporean carrier’s profits.

While Singapore Airlines has lost money on several past overseas investments, what makes its investment in the Indian carrier another tricky prospect is the fact that, as per Tata’s estimates, the business’ turnaround could take up to a decade.

Air India recently appointed former Ethopian Airlines head Tewolde Gebremariam as its new CEO to replace former Singapore Airlines executive Campbell Wilson.

Singapore Airlines has limited formal influence over Air India. Under a 2022 merger agreement that folded its 49%-owned Indian carrier Vistara into ‌Air India, ⁠it received a single board seat, taken up by its CEO Goh Choon Phong.

However, it has a stake of over 25% in the airline, which gives it the power under Indian company law to block special resolutions covering major corporate matters, including mergers, share buybacks, and voluntary winding up.

An opposition Singaporean lawmaker called for Temasek’s funds to refrain from supporting Air India’s funding request.

As of now, Singapore Airlines’ investments in Air India will continue to be funded by its internal resources.

The venture possesses SUSD 10.48 ⁠billion (USD 8.29 billion) in cash reserves and SUSD 3.24 billion in undrawn credit lines as of the end of June.

Singapore’s Senior Minister K. Shanmugam has said while it is up to Singapore Airlines to make decisions on investing in Air India, Temasek expects the airline to make the moves “⁠responsibly.”

It is worth mentioning that Temasek has a significant exposure to India, covering sectors including healthcare, financial services, consumer and technology. The investment giant has cited the South Asian country as a key growth market in its portfolio.

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The statement comes amid growing scrutiny in Singapore over Singapore Airlines’ exposure to Air India, in which it holds a 25.1% stake. Tata Sons owns the remaining 74.9%.

Temasek, which is the majority shareholder of Singapore Airlines, said it viewed the airline’s decision to invest in Air India from a long-term perspective and supported the strategy. It also acknowledged that turning around the former state-owned carrier would involve complex, multi-year operational and integration challenges.

The comments followed reports that Air India is seeking about USD 1.5 billion in fresh equity from Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines.

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The deal will focus on flights between Japan and Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Australia.

Both Singapore Airlines and ANA also signed the deal to stay competitive in the busy and crowded Southeast Asian aviation industry.

The deal will focus on providing connectivity to both Singapore Airlines and ANA’s customers. The two carriers will offer joint mileage programmes to its customers and better coordination on check-in baggage and connecting flights.

The two carriers already have a codesharing agreement which allows them to sell seats on the other carrier’s flights. The new deal will allow the carriers to adjust flight timetables to make connections easier and also cut fares to boost demand.

The deal is subject to regulatory approval. Once approved, Singapore Airlines will become the third airline to have a joint venture agreement with ANA. The Japanese carrier has signed similar agreements with United Airlines in 2011 and Lufthansa Group in 2012.

Last year, Singapore Airlines signed an agreement with Malaysia Airlines to expand their existing codeshare routes. According to the agreement, SilkAir, which is owned by Singapore Airlines, will codeshare on 16 domestic locations with Malaysian Airlines, while allowing the former to codeshare on flights to Europe, South Africa, among other destinations.

During the same period, Vistara, in which Singapore Airlines owns a 49 percent stake, also signed a codeshare agreement with the Singapore-based carrier.

In a press release, Vistara said that Singapore Airlines and regional subsidiary SilkAir have signed an agreement with Vistara to expand codesharing to international routes.

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At present, the robot can scan boarding passes and further provide information on the terminal, departure gates, weather conditions of destination city, real time flight status as well as information about Vistara’s products and services. It greets customers and interacts with them using basic hand movements, and is capable of moving around in the lounge on predefined pathways. Additionally, it can engage with kids and adults alike by playing games and other multimedia content such as songs and videos.

Commenting on the introduction of ‘RADA’, Vistara’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr LeslieThng said: “Innovation is one of the core values engrained in the DNA of Vistara’s culture, which we have fostered within the organization in many ways. RADA is a manifestation of this endeavour. Vistara has disrupted the market through several innovations with the sole objective of redefining air travel in the country, while making its processes more robust and resources more effective. With RADA, we aim to change the way people interact and fly with an airline. We will be developing ‘RADA’ based on customer feedback and equipping it with the most effective features in the time to come. Our steadfast focus remains to be on delighting customers across all touchpoints, and we’re confident that ‘RADA’ will help us take the ‘new feeling’ to the next level.”

‘RADA’ has been envisioned and incubated under Vistara’s Innovation initiative. It is conceived, designed and engineered by its team of technology experts and apprentices from Tata Innovation Lab with support from students of reputed institutions. It is arguably one of India’s most economical robots completely made of indigenous components, thus making a compelling ‘Make in India’ story. ‘RADA’ is built on a chassis of four wheels, enabling it to rotate 360 degrees, and it has three in-built cameras for cognitive interaction. Combining these components with an effective voice technology, Vistara has developed the robot to provide a simple solution to cater to the emerging and future trends.

Explaining what sparked the idea behind ‘RADA’, Vistara’s Chief Information and Innovation Officer, Mr Ravinder Pal Singh: “It was a realisation that the talented, young employees engaged in ground services, gain immense customer service experience on the job, but the limited scope of their routine work could challenge their true potential. Some of them spend decades within the walls of an airport, assisting customers. Vistara is an organization that encourages its employees to look beyond boundaries and leverage the talent and skills of such employees. Therefore, we thought of inventing a robot that can help us enhance customer experience by gradually taking over the routine, mundane tasks. The basic premise of the thought was to develop a simple and extremely cost-effective practical robot that can engage in basic human interaction to begin with, and can further be developed to perform more complex tasks, as consumer habits continue to evolve in the technological age where humans and machines will complement and create a evolved harmonious evolution.”

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Mr. Thng joins Vistara from Budget Aviation Holdings (BAH, A Singapore Airlines Holding Company) where he was serving as the Chief Commercial Officer.

“I am delighted to be joining Vistara that has transformed air travel experience in India and cultivated a reputation of setting new standards in service excellence in the Indian aviation industry” said Leslie Thng. “I look forward to the opportunity to build on the strong foundation and momentum created by Phee Teik Yeoh, and work with the wonderful team of Vistara. I hope to get the support of all stakeholders, including the customers, to take Vistara through its next phase of growth and development”, he added.

Leslie Thng, who started his career in SIA in 1999 and held many senior positions in the airline, has significant leadership experience and deep knowledge of the aviation sector across international markets and various businesses. Prior to being appointed Chief Commercial Officer for Budget Aviation Holdings, he was Chief Executive of SilkAir. Leslie Thng holds a Bachelor Degree (Honors) in Business Administration from the National University of Singapore.

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Organised in partnership with IncubateIND, the ‘Vistara Hackathon’ will involve 20 teams from each city that will compete with each other to create new applications and tools to address aviation-related challenges in areas such as, tracking traveller behaviour, personalisation of air travel, intelligent crowd monitoring at airports, system integration with third-party APIs and software, inflight entertainment and intelligent customer targeting, amongst other challenging aspects. The solutions submitted at the ‘Vistara Hackathon’ will be reviewed by a panel of technology and aviation experts who will hand-pick winners, based on originality, potential for scalability and successful execution.

Mr Phee Teik Yeoh, CEO, Vistara, said, “At Vistara, innovation is at the forefront of everything we do, from design to delivery of our products and service, and in so doing, delighting our customers. Information Technology is our backbone, which helps us stay ahead of the curve and do the right things at the right time and in the most effective way. The ‘Vistara Hackathon’ is a reflection of our innovative approach to leverage on technology in our effort to change the way people travel in India, and therefore, bring them the ‘new feeling of flying’ with Vistara.”

Elaborating the airline’s focus on technology, Mr Ravinder Pal Singh, Chief Information & Innovation Officer, Vistara, said, “Vistara is the first Indian airline to have built an end-to-end IT infrastructure on Cloud. We’re adopting the latest technologies to drive innovation across avenues – from maximising convenience for travellers across customer touchpoints to simplifying internal processes that lead to increased productivity and cost-saving. Technology will help bring about disruptive changes in the aviation industry, some of which we hope to discover at the ‘Vistara Hackathon’.”

Vistara continues to invest in cutting-edge business software, mobility, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, big-data impacting and improving people & quality of its workplace – all with the purpose of delivering an unmatched experience across all touchpoints as well as to optimize processes and operations. In a short span of less than three years, Vistara has developed a technological framework to support its growth and to ensure a seamless experience for millions of travellers.

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