INDIA. Mumbai Travel Retail Private Limited (MTRPL), the joint venture between Adani Airport Holdings and Flemingo Travel Retail, this evening announced a rebranding of its retail business under the Ospree name, led by the ‘Ospree Duty Free, Shopping Spree’ tag line.
The move was revealed by MTRPL CEO Avishek Bambii Das at a special event hosted by the travel retailer just before the APTRA India Conference Opening Cocktail.
The conference runs from 19-21 March in Delhi. The Moodie Davitt Report Founder & Chairman Martin Moodie is in attendance and will bring you more details soon.
The new brand identity underlines the JV’s heady ambitions to expand in the travel retail space.
As reported yesterday, Eurotunnel has appointed MTRPL subsidiary Le Marché Duty-Free to manage the duty-free business at Eurotunnel’s French terminal in Coquelles (near Calais).
“This is a very important day for us,” said Adani Airport Holdings CEO – Non Aero Harshad Jain as he welcomed guests to the evening.
Jain began by setting the Adani Group’s extraordinary recent emergence as an airports powerhouse in context.
“As part of the Adani Group, Adani Airports is a very large and very strategic investment for us,” he said. “As a company, we got into this business only about two and a half years back, when in September 2021, we bought out Mumbai Airport, and then we took over many Airport Authority of India airports.
“As we speak, today, we are among the largest airport companies in the country,” he observed, noting the company holds an approximate 30% share of domestic passenger numbers; more than 40% of international traffic and 45-50% of cargo traffic.
“Within our airports business, non-aero is a very critical pillar… the entire revenue stream of the business is actually predicated on the non-aero revenues. And within the various lines of businesses that we run from car parking to lounges to retail, advertising and other lines… the duty-free business is amongst the most strategic and most critical businesses in our entire portfolio.”
Jain said the group had seen a “tremendous amount of momentum” since directly entering the duty-free business in September 2021 when it struck a Share Subscription Agreement with Flemingo Travel Retail Private Limited and MTRPL, giving it a controlling 74% equity share capital of MTRPL.
“This growth is predicated fundamentally on two or three very fundamental shifts which are happening. Number one, there is a massive tailwind as far as the Indian economy is concerned.
“We are almost now a US$3 trillion economy. In the last five years, India has moved from a number nine economy to a number four economy currently, and at the rate at which we are going by 2030… it could be somewhere amongst the top two or three economies.
“This has a direct implication on travel. The moment the Indian economy does well it has a direct impact on travel. The tailwinds that we are seeing behind travel are absolutely unprecedented.
“In the next three to four years, India will have over 700 million people who are going to be travelling. That means out of our 1.4 billion population, 50% of the people… will be traveling. And this has a direct impact on what we see in terms of consumption.”
As a result, the group’s duty-free business has seen “massive growth” in terms of all key KPIs, Jain said. “We talk about goodness of growth – that is our company philosophy,” he continued. “And we’ve seen that momentum.”
Jain celebrated the company’s recent success – announced earlier this week – in winning the concession to manage the duty-free business at Eurotunnel’s French terminal in Coquelles (near Calais).
He said such successes and the company’s overall momentum were down to a combination of strong leadership, the group’s “complete commitment” to the airport and duty-free sectors, and the great partnerships the group enjoys with brands.
Next came the big moment as Mumbai Travel Retail Private Limited CEO Avishek Bambii Das took to the stage to announce the company’s new identity and branding. He began by thanking brand partners and echoing Jain’s delight at “planting a flag right in Europe” with the Eurotunnel contract.
“We have always been a company that punches way above our weight… and we intend to continue that journey,” he said. “We will need your support to deliver on our ambition of planting a flag in almost every country overseas.”
Building up to the brand reveal, Das explained the inspiration behind the name. “Let me tell you a story,” he began. “It is the story of a bird – a bird that fascinated me.
“We are a passionate bunch and we work pretty late into the night… and one night I came across this interesting story about a bird that flies 5,000 miles to come to India and then goes back during migration. 5,000 miles. That’s, say, from Mumbai to London, or Mumbai to Perth – countries that we want to get into.
“That bird is much smaller than an eagle and much smaller than any of the large birds that you would have heard of. But it flies faster than them. It’s an agile bird that flies faster than the biggies, goes 5,000 miles and guess what? It’s among the birds that has the best long-term vision – it sees its prey miles away.
“That sounds a lot like us, right? We fly faster than our competition. We are more aggressive than our competition – in a good way. And we have a long-term vision based on microscopic details that we focus on daily. And today, our new ambition starts with the identity inspired by this bird [the Osprey -Ed].”
The video reveal of the Ospree (a play on Osprey) branding was complemented by a congratulatory video featuring Indian acting and film-producing superstar Shah Rukh Khan – also the face of a limited-edition luxury streetwear brand.
More on this story will follow very soon. ✈
