Guest Lecture By Mr. Subir Hazra, Associate Vice President & Head, Strategic Planning, Delhi International Airport At GMR Group – VGSoM

On the 26th of October, 2017, the Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur had the privilege of hosting Mr. Subir Hazra, Associate Vice President and Head, Strategic Planning, Delhi International Airport Limited at GMR Group, under its flagship guest lecture series ‘Vaarta’. Mr. Hazra, an alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur, a conferee of the highly acclaimed British Council Chevening Gurukul scholarship program for Leadership and Excellence by the London School of Economics and Political Science, is adept at international business operations, evaluation of new business and acquisition opportunities, Strategy and Planning to name a few.  In his resplendent career spanning over 23 years, Mr. Hazra, has been closely associated with several multi-million dollars’ worth business projects and incubated them through total operational performance (TOP) and achieved exceptional results.

His lecture on the topic of ‘Successful implementation of PPP project’ was an extremely interactive one which generated substantial interest and genuine curiosity amongst the aspiring managers of VGSoM.

Mr. Hazra commenced this intriguing session with a brief history of GMR group and its journey from being a fledgeling to becoming one amongst the top 5 private airport developers in the world. Mr. Hazra stressed the importance of being “on time” and “on cost” in any infrastructure development project and especially in one as large as the Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL). He also provided a glimpse into the huge socio-economic impact of such a massive project. While providing insights on financial terms like percent revenue share, debt-equity ratio, Mr. Hazra also emphasized on the need to be on a constant lookout for business opportunities to create value. With a wide spectrum of examples from the global arena like that of Singapore, Philippines, Mr. Hazra enlightened one and all with concepts of functional benchmarking and policies practised at GMR.

Mr. Hazra addressed the students at VGSoM as future leaders and policymakers for infrastructure development. In his series of business mantras, Mr. Hazra spoke at length on the importance of identifying the right partners in business, meeting expectations of stakeholders, having proper knowledge about the risks that are critical to the private partners. While stressing on “High Risk, High Return” concept, he plugged in the prime framework of making a profit via sustainability in the minds of budding managers.

He then went on to talk about the Delhi Airport and the successful implementation of the public-private partnership model in it. He was extremely structured in his train of thoughts. He started with the practical hurdles faced while financing such a massive project before moving on to the implementation challenges on the ground. He concluded this by stressing on the socio-economic implications of such massive infrastructural development projects, both while implementation, and post completion.

Towards the end, Mr. Hazra took some out to answer the multiple questions of the extremely enthusiastic students. The questions ranged from revenues and financing to the development of relevant business strategies.

As budding entrepreneurs and business enthusiasts, it was an extremely fruitful interaction wherein the students gained a unique industry perspective in a domain which is relatively new in the Indian psyche, i.e. Aviation Infrastructure Development. We look forward to more such interactions to gain a panoramic view on the essentials to succeed in the industry.