This autobiography details the life of Captain Gopinath, founder of the low-cost airline Air Deccan. It describes his varied career path, from army officer to model farmer, dealer, share broker, and more. As an entrepreneur, he spotted opportunities and launched businesses successfully. This led him to establish Air Deccan, which revolutionized Indian air travel by offering low fares. However, he eventually had to give up control of the airline. The book provides lessons on entrepreneurship and finding one's calling, using opportunities that come your way.

1. Book: SIMPLY FLY DECCAN ODYSSEY
by Dr. R. Rajagopalan on 29-Mar-2010
Jai Jawan, Jai Kisaan, Jai Dukhan and Jai Deccan!
This is the autobiography of Captain Gopinath, the founder of the low cost carrier Air Deccan, which
revolutionalized Indian air travel. But the surprise in store is that he has been an army officer (not IAF),
model farmer, dealer, share broker, hotelier, a consultant and even a District President of BJP. This is
also a story of an intrepid entrepreneur in action- his challenges, dilemmas and decisions. Through this
book, Captain Gopinath has shown he is a good writer and a storyteller too.
Captain G.R. Gopinath (Gopi) does have an exciting story to tell in his autobiography. Gopi is one of the
success stories of the economic liberalization since 1990s. It is not another rags to riches story, but
about a person's search for his calling in life rather than a merely successful conventional career. It
illustrates how an entrepreneur spots and grabs lucky breaks and opportunities which come his way.
Son of a poor Brahmin teacher, Gopi studies in a Kannada medium village school. He does poorly in the
entrance exam for admission to a sainik school as the exam is in English. His teacher's protest letter
makes the authorities conduct another exam in Kannada! Gopi thus graduates from a sainik school,
followed by the National Defence Academy (NDA) and the Indian Military Academy (IMA) to become an
officer in the Indian army (not Air Force as I thought!). Almost immediately he is deployed in the 1971
Bangladesh liberation war.
He quits the army with no savings and returns to his village, only to find his family's meager lands
submerged by a new dam across river Hemavathy. Gopi consolidates the barren lands granted as
compensation to his extended family in a far away village. Gopi marries Bhargavi.He experiments with
sustainable farming, sericulture, dairy farming and poultry among others. Gopi wins an award for
innovation in sericulture! They shift to Hassan, a district town. There, Gopi sets up a successful chain of
'Malnad Mobikes' a dealership in motorbikes; establishes and runs a Udupi restaurant; dabbles briefly as
a share broker; sets up an agency for drip irrigation systems and a successful consultancy for
landscaping, farming, irrigation etc. Gopi gets involved in public affairs, and persuaded by the then
emerging BJP in Karnataka, becomes its District in-charge and contests assembly elections!

2. Gopi eventually shifts to Bangaluru to be with his two daughters in school. He touches base with his
army buddies, particularly Capt. Sam, an ex-helicopter pilot. As a civilian, Sam is forced to take up a job
as an administrator and security in-charge. Gopi hits upon the idea of setting up Deccan Aviation, a
private helicopter service to help businessmen and tourists travel quickly to smaller towns with poor
connectivity. He discovers that the dream to fly is present even amongst common people, if only the
pricing is appropriate.
That insight creates a passion in Gopi to translate the Udupi hotel idea to air travel! Air Deccan is thus
born with the catchy slogan 'Simply Fly' and R.K. Laxman's Common Man as the mascot. He cuts out
sales agents and offers a no frills air-service at half the prevalent price. Air Deccan creates an entirely
new class of air-travelers and set of destinations to soon become the market leader. He faces a
dilemma: He can grow either steadily at the risk of being slowly strangled by its bigger competitors; or
grow aggressively with the risk of facing a financial liquidity crunch. He chooses the latter with
innovative financing plans for purchase of aircrafts and flight coupons. But he is forced into seeking
external equity finance from Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher. Mallya's value systems and strategies are the very
antithesis of 'Simply Fly' and 'Common Man'!
Gopi gives up passenger planes and helicopters- but now he is busy setting up a Udupi hotel equivalent
in logistics through his Deccan 360, with its nerve centre at Nagpur. Best of luck Gopi!
The set of photographs included in the book (between pages&) adds charm and authenticity to the
autobiography.
What are possible takeaways for the reader?
Gopi's quitting the army teaches one not to hang around in a job if our heart is not in it. Gopi, as a
farmer and businessman at Hassan, gives us several lessons: it is only the ecologically sustainable
farming methods that are economically viable in the long run; if you are doing good work you will find
timely help and advice from well-wishers. One should move on in life without resting on past laurels by l
using one's time, talent and contacts in the best possible way. This self-growth gives space for others to
grow. A good idea and passion for timely execution can overcome the constraint of resources.
There are hard lessons too in these entrepreneurial stories: a competing hotelier stealing his chef in the
last minute; a multi-national bank leading him up the garden path on payment gateways; an IT service
provider taking advantage of client dependency to launch a competing airline; speed versus
sustainability; and, an investor in need killing your very idea in deed&
There are colourful stories which contradict our stereotype of politicians- how George Fernandez, Gulab
Nabi Azad, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Chandra Babu Naidu, Rama Krishna Hegde and J.H Patel were all helpful in
cutting through bureaucratic red tape. There is a charming confrontation with Deve Gowda when he
comes in a procession with a bullock cart-wheel blazing behind him as if he is Vishnu himself!
There are very interesting human stories too. A petty Muslim trader gives his sister a wedding in the sky
on a Deccan helicopter. An NRI Manjunath lands in his village in a helicopter to pick up his parents to
wipe out an insult in his childhood. A girl gives her father a helicopter ride as a gift on his sixtieth

3. birthday-never mind one year too late as she has not saved enough. Plumbers and carpenters fly for the
first and perhaps only time in their life by Air Deccan.
Gopi says he dictated most of the contents which were later transcribed by a colleague and edited by
another. This shows up- an uninformative table of contents going simply as Chapter 1, 2 etc. There are
several typos, most of them due to transcription and cut/paste while editing. But these are minor
irritants.
Simply read Simply Fly. Who knows how will this change you?
To know more about Captain Gopinath and read more reviews, simply logon to Justbooksclc the best
Online book library in Bangalore.
http://www.justbooksclc.com/SearchTitleDetails.action?
keyword=SIMPLY+FLY+DECCAN+ODYSSEY&page=1&title_id=71066