Naresh Goyal is a man who made his dreams come true with sheer passion, hard work, and determination. He started out in a travel agency with a monthly salary of Rs. 300 and now remarkably is a nationwide industrialist with an annual turnover of Rs 3,300 crores.
He struggled with a lot of challenges initially to establish his concept of private airlines in India. However, now he is an admired owner of Jet Airways. Naresh Goyal is the one who launched Jet Airways, which is India’s largest known private airline company.
In 1949, he was born to a small family in Patiala who were running their own business. While he was still little he witnessed the family business go down. His family had to lose all of their possession in order to overcome their financial loss. Naresh was only 12 when he suffered all these hardships but he never lost hope and continued his studies.
Naresh’s first dream was to become a chartered accountant right after he completed schooling. But due to his family’s financial hardships, he had to set his dream aside.
In 1967, he was 18 and completed his B.Com. He started working in the travel agency that his mother’s uncle owned, as a cashier. He received a salary of Rs 300 per month. Meanwhile, Naresh was offered to work for many colossal companies like Royal Jordan Airlines.
In 1969, his experience made him the manager of an airline company which was based out of Iran. In the subsequent five years, he worked for different airline companies. And later he finally decided to launch his own travel agency.
At the age of 25, Naresh sold his mother’s jewelry and received a ransom of Rs 15,000. The sum allowed him to start up with a travel agency. He soon went on to start off The Jet Air his dream project with a total of Rs 10,000.
Jet Air was initially known to provide facilitation in marketing and sales to the foreign airline companies. To transform travel agency into a thriving airline company was a massive leap. In 1991, private airlines were introduced in India and Naresh wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and changed the aspect of Jet Air with Jet Airlines.
The first flight of Jet Airways took place on April 18 in the year 1993 from the Santa Cruz Airport in Mumbai. And today, Jet Airways is established as one of the most influential brands in the world. It has a share of 32% of the Indian travel market. Naresh is presently India’s 16th richest person who has assets worth over Rs 3,300 crores.
Naresh chose to pursue his dream no matter what hardships life threw at his way and turned out to be an inspiration to many. To this day, the enormous achievements have not changed Naresh’s demeanor and he continues to be humble and kind to others according to his colleagues.
(Photo Credit: The Quint, Rediff, Jet Airways)
