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Kanika Tekriwal of JetSetGo

Here’s to Fit the Soul’s Wonder Woman of December, Kanika Tekriwal!

Meet Kanika Tekriwal, CEO of JetSetGo. She is an entrepreneur who relentlessly pursues hope and positivity; her energy is infectious. A marathon runner, painter, and traveller, she redefines her life every day. She battled cancer in her early 20s and then tore into the aviation sector to establish India’s first and only marketplace for private jet and helicopter charters. Recently, she was featured as one of the Forbes ’30 under 30’ achievers in Asia for changing the face of e-commerce and shopping. Kanika is a force to reckon with.

Soaring Dreams

Kanika joined boarding school when she was seven years old and had a rough time of it. Always perceived as a loser, she was bullied and had no real friends. At assembly, no one wanted to stand next to her; she was lonely and friendless. Today, she is almost thankful that she was bullied in school and started out as an under-confident kid. These experiences have given her courage and resilience that have influenced her extensive work in aviation.

Kanika’s passion for aviation goes back to her childhood. Like many children, she was fascinated by flying, but unlike most others, she propelled her idea forward as soon as she could. This 28-year-old hails from a Marwari business family—entrepreneurship is in her blood. She knew from a young age that she wanted to run a business of her own at some point in her life. Although she never became a pilot, she entered the world of aviation by working with a multinational corporation and set up a private aviation division for it when she was 17. ‘All my learning has been on the job’, Kanika recalls.

Kanika started working in the aviation industry when private jets in the country were few and far between. Besides India, she has also worked abroad and seen the industry grow (and shrink, of course, over the past year or so) and learnt a thing or two about it. While she worked, she had an idea for a company brewing in her head. But when she took out her sketchbook to start working on it, she received some devastating news.

At 22, Kanika was diagnosed with cancer. The first doctor she met told her she had only months to live. Unwilling to give up, she told her doctor that she would come and see him after 40 years—not for treatment, but to show him that she was still alive and kicking. She then found a doctor who believed in her recovery. Cancer made Kanika strong, ready to face any challenge, and fight to never give up. When she was wheeled out of the operation theatre after her cancer surgery, she vowed to take control of her destiny. She always knew she was stronger than the cancer and would come out victorious.

Although the cancer set her back about a year, luckily for her, nobody else in the country had gotten around to starting a company like hers until she had finished her treatments. Then, in 2014, after around 20 months of back and forth and many a blip, she launched India’s first online marketplace for private jet and helicopter charters, JetSetGo.

Kanika’s initial investment was around ₹5,000, a whole lot of goodwill, and determination. She was lucky to have had a network of individuals who had faith in her; they gave the company steady demand for a few months. Thankfully, JetSetGo never had to go out and look for funding—it always came in on its own. Customers—also the company’s biggest advertisers—turned into investors wanting to be a part of the story. Two prominent customers, cricketer Yuvraj Singh and industrialist Puneet Dalmia, saw the company’s potential and stepped in as investors. Since its inception, the company has grown organically, with its customers spreading the word. JetSetGo now has 70 employees who manage and operate privately owned aircraft that double up as the company’s fleet; it has contracts running into $20 million and manages assets worth $70 million. From its humble beginnings of one flight a week, JetSetGo now has one plane in the sky every minute.

The company caters to a wide range of clientele—business owners who have to travel between three or four cities in a day, inbound and outbound tourists, emergency evacuees, and tourists on pilgrimages to remote areas. Kanika calls her company ‘the Uber of the skies’. ‘Between 10 am and 6 pm, my phone is on steroids’, Kanika says. ‘We have a big servicing team, but customers still want to talk directly with me. They start planning trips at 6 am, and that’s when I get calls. If I’m not always available, what’s the difference between JetSetGo and other operators?’ she asks. Uber luxury in the skies may seem a far cry in India, but Kanika has managed to pierce the rarefied atmosphere and make private aviation a reality.

The Peculiar Loneliness of Entrepreneurship

In the first three years of her journey as an entrepreneur, building something from scratch, she lost friends, lived out of unpacked boxes in unfurnished houses, ate more takeaway than ever before, missed important family events, took friends and family for granted, made enemies, burnt through her savings, went endless nights without sleep, worked from cafés, learnt to love things she hated, did things she previously deemed impossible, answered the same questions countless times, dealt with people asking her uncomfortable questions about her personal life, broke down emotionally, feared failure, put on a smile for her team against all odds, forgot what a vacation was, had friends envy her for all the wrong reasons, fought a lot more than she thought possible, and had a mountain of dirty laundry occupy the other half of her bed. ‘But looking back, I do not regret a single day. I have learnt and grown so much in the past five years and I wouldn’t change a thing today’, she reveals. When asked about her plans for the future, she sums it up in just two words—world domination. Surely the sky’s the limit for this entrepreneur.

Kanika’s message to every woman, entrepreneur, and cancer survivor is this: use every ‘no’ as a stepping stone to success. Do whatever you want—live each day on your terms. Focus on being and creating the change. It’s a constant journey, so keep evolving. Strength comes from within you and you have the power to do anything.