Betting big on India's economic growth and burgeoning civil aviation sector, leading Turkish service provider Celebi has lined up an investment of $75.2 million to ramp up its ground handling and air cargo operations in the country this year.
Talking to a group of visiting Indian journalists at the company's office located in the "European" part of this commercial capital of Turkey, Celebi Holdings Chairman Can Celebioglu was clearly fascinated with the Indian economy's growth saga and its open society.
During the more than hour-long interaction, Can made it clear that these are the two main reasons which have prompted Turkey's biggest airport ground-handling service provider to choose India as its future investment and business destination in preference over a bigger economy like China.
Asked why Celebi has chosen India for its operations and not a bigger economy like China, the company's chairman said communication in China is a problem as "Chinese are communicate more with themselves and are closed" while "India is more open and it is easier to communicate with them".
"We feel closer to India than China", he said.
Celebi at present has ground-handling and cargo business at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai and undertakes just cargo handling in Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport.
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Senior Celebi officials make it clear that economy of operational scale in ground-handling and air cargo markets will be the key to the company's future growth in India as it will be a volume-driven business.
Ground-handling covers virtually the entire range of activities relating to an aircraft the moment it touches down at or takes off from an airport like passenger and baggage handling, check-in and boarding, cleaning of planes, aircraft security, handling of warehousing of cargo and providing ramp services.
Atilla Korkmazoglu, President of Celebi Holding's flagship company dealing with ground handling in the Far East, said the company is ready with the latest electronic aviation equipment to handle the giant super luxury A 380 aircraft which German carrier Lufthansa plans to start next year in India if Indian airports are ready to receive the planes.
"Since we have the equipment, we will have a competitive advantage in ground handling of an aircraft like A 380," said he.
Atilla said Celebi is ready with $17 million investment to strengthen its ground-handling operations at Mumbai and $13.2 million in Delhi this year as the two busiest airports in India cope with more passenger traffic.
The company is also going to hire one thousand people at the two metros to meet its expanded operations, according to Atilla. At present, Celebi has 1955 personnel in Mumbai and 327 in Delhi.
"We are working hard to expand our ground-handling services in airports in Delhi and Mumbai and are also looking at entering the other big airports in India, particularly Hyderabad and Bangalore," he said.