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Air Asia, the low-cost airline, would take at least one year to break-even in its Indian operations, said Tony Fernandes, group chief executive officer, on Thursday.   “We are very excited

to be in India. We need to accelerate the planes coming here,” he said. Earlier, the company had said it would achieve the break-even in four months. Mittu Chandilya, CEO of AirAsia India

said the focus of the airline would be to keep its costs low and drive up revenues. ... PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR THE COMPLETE COVERAGE OF BUDGET 2014 -15 Air Asia, the low-cost airline, would

take at least one year to break-even in its Indian operations, said Tony Fernandes, group chief executive officer, on Thursday.   “We are very excited to be in India. We need to accelerate

the planes coming here,” he said. Earlier, the company had said it would achieve the break-even in four months. Mittu Chandilya, CEO of AirAsia India said the focus of the airline would be

to keep its costs low and drive up revenues.  ... PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR THE COMPLETE COVERAGE OF BUDGET 2014 -15 For this, the strategy even means counting the numbers of papers that they

print or number of cups of coffee they drink in their offices. Even reducing costs, the carrier wanted to keep the quality high, he told reporters.   “We are lot more bullish about Indian

market. There is no secret recipe to doing that. We keep our costs low. " "We are very much conscious about the costs and the discipline about keeping everything low. There is no

big secret thing to do this," he said.   ... PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR THE COMPLETE COVERAGE OF BUDGET 2014 -15 Fernandes said, “This is about volume. The secret weapon is to grow very

quickly and become a mass-market company. If we are doing one flight a day, our aim is to make 10 flights a day. Second, infrastructure is there and if we can use it more we can offer less

cost per passenger.”   He said their mantra is to unbundle fare structure. "We charge for food and extra luggage. Why should one passenger who is carrying less luggage subsidise the

other who is carrying more," he questioned.   "The key to this is about volume and make it affordable, which I think is fantastic," he added.   Chandilya also said AirAsia

will retain the Rs 990 fare even when the company goes for expansion of new routes. It is expected to announce new routes next week.  ... PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR THE COMPLETE COVERAGE OF

BUDGET 2014 -15