Budget airline IndiGo hires fraud investigator Somyajit Sethi as its first ethics and compliance chief

Low-cost carrier IndiGo has reportedly hired Somyajit Sethi to head its ethics and compliance department. Sethi is likely to join the airline by the end of this month, reported  The Economic Times. Sethi, who has spent over 16 years working with organisations like BDO, Deloitte, KPMG and CRISIL, was one of two lead investigators tasked by the Mumbai-traded Punjab National Bank (PNB) to probe the Nirav Modi fraud. [caption id=“attachment_4391375” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters.[/caption] “The hiring is part of the plan to create IndiGo 2.0 — preparing the airline for a second phase of growth,” a source close to the development was quoted as saying by the newspaper. The budget carrier, which is gearing up for a larger international play, has been hiring people who have managed operations for large airlines. In late April, IndiGo’s President Aditya Ghosh  put in his papers, after a decade of piloting the airline and helping it garner a majority share of the world’s fastest growing major domestic aviation market. In January, IndiGo appointed Wolfgang Prock-Schauer as Chief Operating Officer. IndiGo has a fleet of 160 Airbus A320 aircraft and six ATRs. It operates over 1,000 flights a day, connecting 50 destinations. IndiGo has been battling Pratt & Whitney (P&W) engine woes, with at least four of its planes reportedly experiencing glitches in one particular week. IndiGo is owned by the BSE-traded InterGlobe Aviation, which has a market capitalisation of around Rs 46,966 crore. The budget airline was founded by Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal, a former chief executive of U.S. Airways, in 2006. With inputs from PTI