Vistara received an equity investment of millions of dollars about a couple of weeks before announcing the proposed Air India-Vistara merger deal, reports Business Standard. As per the sources, the investment can be broken down as $40 million from the Tatas and $38.4 million from the Singapore Airlines (SIA).
Since its inception, Vistara has received more than $600 million from the Tata Group and $585 million from SIA.
Meanwhile, Vistara has reported loss in the last fiscal amounting to $256 million on a year-on-year basis. Justifying the loss, the airline claimed that first half of FY22 was impacted by the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic while the airlines bore the brunt of rising fuel-prices and pandemic-recovery in the second half of FY 22. Surprisingly, in the eight years since its inception, Vistara has not made profit even once.
SIA spokesperson said: “Vistara has not reached profitability as it has not reached a scale where there are cost and network efficiencies.”
Going ahead, Vistara and Air India will continue to operate as separate airlines until their businesses are fully integrated, which is likely to be done by March 2024.