Deccan Aviation IPO response overwhelming: Gopinath

Bangalore, May 22 (UNI) The response to the initial public offer of Deccan Aviation, the parent company of India's premier low cost airliner Air Deccan, has been ''overwhelming'', Air Deccan Managing Director Capt G R Gopinath said today.

Capt Gopinath, who arrived here yesterday after a 15-day overseas roadshow for the IPO, told UNI that a number of fund managers in various countries had evinced keen interest in the offer. Most of the fund managers were keen to know about the fundamentals of the Indian economy as also of the company, he added.

Brushing aside as ''rumours'' reports that the company was pulling out of the IPO in view of the crash in the stock market in the country last week, he said people should not believe in such rumours, but take a decision on investment by looking into the company's prospectus.

The company's IPO for 24,546,000 equity shares at a price band of Rs 150 to Rs 175 per share with a face value of Rs ten would close tomorrow. The issue was being made through a 100 per cent book building process, wherein 50 per cent of the issue should be allotted to qualified institutional buyers on a proportionate basis out of which five per cent should be available for allocation on a proportionate basis to Mutual Funds only. The company proposed to raise Rs 368.19 crore at the lower end of the price band and Rs 429.55 crore at the higher end.

Cornering a 16 per cent share of the civil aviation sector in just 34 months of operation, Air Deccan was currently flying more than half a million passengers a month, operating 35 aircraft in 56 routes spread across the country. Last year, it flew three million passengers and this year the number was likely to cross 7.5 million, surpassing India's flagship domestic carrier Indian. The aircraft had already signed up for 100 aircraft and would be adding an aircraft to its fleet every month over the next 100 months.

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