Flightpath with Alok
Firoz Tarapore | DAE
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Episode notes
In this, the 3rd episode of Flightpath with Alok, we hear from Firoz Tarapore, Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors of Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE). DAE is a specialist, global aircraft leasing partner boasting an impressive three decades of experience in the global leasing market. Firoz joined DAE whilst it was in its infancy and played a pivotal role in developing DAE, first as chief finance officer, then as a chief operating officer, before then taking the helm as CEO of what has become one of the world's largest aircraft leasing companies. His vision and strategic planning have helped DAE to become a key player in the aviation industry. Under his leadership, DAE has grown significantly and expanded its fleet size to approximately 500 aircraft. Firoz holds an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Bombay. Firoz talks to Alok about his early years, moving to the US from Bombay to further his finance studies, why he stayed for 22 years, and why he decided to make the move to Dubai. Firoz speaks candidly about the successes and insights he has picked up along the way and gives some thought to what the next generation of young executives may benefit from as they consider their career paths and whether aviation may be what they are looking for.
#assetmanagement #aviation #aircraftleasing #aviationfinance #flightpath #alok #flightpathwithalok #ifsca #giftcity #india #dae #daecapital #dubaiaerospace #firoztarapore #dubai
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Transcript:
Alok | Flightpath:
I wanted to set a context and I have never had this opportunity to sit down with you actually.
Firoz Tarapore:
Hahaha
Alok | Flightpath:
So I’m personally very glad that I'm getting that, even though I've known you for many years now. And before I even start, I'm actually very curious, your full name is familiar to me because I think the name comes from a place called Tarapur in Maharashtra. Please allow me to welcome you to the show. This is the third episode of The Flight Path with me, Alok. And it's a pleasure that you have accepted to give us time. I think you're in Dubai right now, morning 9.30 AM for you. So thank you very much for making time. I think I'll straight away start with knowing a little bit about the story, I don't know much about your story, basically. Please tell us, especially your upbringing, where you're from, how you have come to Dubai, and now you are leading this big firm, DAE.
Firoz Tarapore:
We're trying to make it bigger. Yeah, so listen, my background is relatively straightforward as it comes. I grew up in Bombay and I still continue to call it Bombay. And I studied there, I worked there for a little bit, and then I went to the US to do further studies in finance. And as it turns out, when you are a kid, growing up in India and you go to the US for studies, the financial obligations at the end of those studies are not insignificant. Then you say, maybe I'll work for a year or two years and see if I can pay all that out. So 22 years after that, I left the US to come join a startup company in Dubai called Dubai Aerospace. And I joined them as CFO because my background is essentially finance and transactions and structured operations and stuff like this. And it's been a ride since then where we've taken this startup through global financial crisis, where there were things that we had to worry about that were not in the original business plan, but we dealt with those. And then today, you know, we are kind of what we are. So it's been a journey, but it's relatively straightforward. Study work, study work, and here we are.
Alok | Flightpath:
Ok, you have kind of oversimplified it.
Firoz Tarapore:
HA!
Alok | Flightpath:
But Ok, I'll take that. That at least gives me some insight. And now, what I understand is Dubai Aerospace is a very interesting company, because Dubai Aerospace is not just a lessor. There's a group, DAE Capital, obviously. It's a big lessor. But you also have DAE Engineering. And it's a very interesting combination. I think possibly the only lessor I know of who is having this interesting mix of an MRO and a capital provider leasing company at the same time. How has that come about? And I was wondering from a business model point of view, what is the thinking behind this and how do you see it drives value, you know?
Firoz Tarapore:
Yeah. So to understand that we have to take two steps back. As you can surmise from the name of our company, it says Dubai Aerospace. It doesn't say Dubai Leasing, Dubai Aviation Leasing, Dubai Aircraft Leasing or whatever. And when we started out live, the mandate was to establish a footprint in six different protocols within the aviation space. And that's the reason for the broad name of aerospace because we were intending to have a large footprint in the manufacturing side of things, in the engineering side of things, in the servicing, education, et cetera, et cetera. And when we had to refocus our resources because resources were limited after 2008-2009, we focused essentially on those two elements out of those six that we could establish a strong market presence in and that also were kind of profitable as opposed to spending years and years and years investing before you break even before you start making money. And those two segments were leasing and engineering. And just as background, at that time, we owned the world's largest independent engine MRO called Standard Arrow. And Standard Arrow is now a huge company because after we invested it in 2015, the owners after that did incredible consolidation and it's a bigger company. But at that time, we had a very large engine MRO presence. But it was headquartered out of necessity out of North America because that's where the engines are by and large. It was a global business, but all the facilities, nine out of our 13 facilities were in either US or Canada. And the strategy at that point was to have acquired all of this to ultimately bring the nexus of all of that to Dubai. But as it turns out, in the engine MRO space, the economics are massively skewed in favour of the OEM as opposed to the independent MRO because you have to buy parts from them, you have to buy IP from them and when you end up paying for all that, what is left really is just margin on labor, which is a hard global business to run. So we changed our focus, we got rid of the engine MRO business, which is a great business for somebody who can do different things with it. And then we instead invested in an airframe and everything other than MRO business in the region. And so we established that beachhead through the acquisition of Joramco. And then we spent the last few years turning that operation from what it was to the world class business that it is today. Revenues are now double what they were when we acquired it. And our business plan is to double them from this point forward within the next, I would say five-ish years by expanding, by doing different things. And so I think broadly speaking, our ambitions are to create a broader aviation company, not just a leasing company. Predominantly, in the region when you look at everything other than leasing. Leasing is a global business. You can't be a regional resort. That doesn't make any sense because these are mobile assets. We can globally move them around. But on other stuff, for example, Joramco is one of the leading MROs in the region. There are other areas that within aviation that have been dormant and it's quite dormant for us. And it's quite likely, quite possible that as we think now about next steps, that we might acquire something that fits with what we do and what our overall aspirations are and are consistent with the developments in the industry. So if you think about technology, if you think about the momentum around what’s going on with decarbonization, if you think then about what aviation needs at the vector of all of those things, there are opportunities that we might consider. So think of us not just as a lessor, although we're a very large top 10 lessor, as a broader aviation company, but everything we do, we do because it makes sense on its own two feet. We don't buy an MRO because it helps the leasing or we don't do leasing because it helps the MRO, because it doesn't. There are two separate businesses. I've got leaders running those businesses and each of their KPIs is set based on what they can do, not what they can do because of each other. And even today, you know, there is a purely arm's length relationship between our division. So one division wants to use the services of another, they pay the rate that the division is asking, they stand in line consistent with their request, and that's kind of how it works.
Alok | Flightpath:
So you know the other question I have from an aircraft leasing perspective. As a business, as aircraft leasing is evolving, you are a unique lessor, in terms of your geographical location, and ability to, I think, deploy capital and assets in a large part of Middle East. But also you have this big unit now, since around five, six years back, you had acquired EVAS, you have a big setup in Dublin. So it gives you a very unique perspective. And one of the things which I have been researching is how the different lessors are operating, like some lessors I know out there, they like to call themselves order book lessors, where they go about placing a big order book and then deploying them. SLB is not typically a model for them. I believe DAE is doing kind of both, DAE capital, I mean, they're doing order booking, but they're also doing time to time SLB leasing, right? I was just hoping to get a perspective from you. And this is purely an academic question, as to what are the merits, how you think these models work and what works possibly best for DAE and why.
Firoz Tarapore:
Yeah, so I'll describe to you kind of what we are doing as a way to answering kind of what models work for us and why this versus something else, right? And so first of all, you know, if you just aspire to be a me too company, you're always going to have me too returns with it that those are never enough. Those are never adequate. So when you ask yourself the question, you know, what do you do differently? Why do you do it different? For us, there are two or three things. One is we have created a model that allows us to serve multiple masters. So because each master cannot do everything in the universe. And what I mean by that is that when I take my own capital and acquire assets, we have a very tightly defined envelope of what we will buy. This kind of asset, this kind of LSC, this kind of structure, this kind of return, this kind of that, this kind of that. And so if you imagine that this is the space in which we operate, our envelope is maybe like this. But that means we're not able to play in all the other stuff. But there are dozens of people who say, I don't want to play here, I actually want to play here, I want to play here, I want to play here. And the model that we have created is a capability set, our platform, that can serve multiple masters that can say without prejudice, without bias to say this is good or this is bad or this is preferred and this is not preferred. We can deliver returns to those people who only want to buy, say brand new aircraft on lease to Delta Airlines or British Airways or Qantas or some like that. We can provide adequate returns to people who only want to buy assets between 12 and 18 years and manage the grease part of the asset, which is actually very profitable. But we have capability sets that will allow us to effectively do the front end, the middle end, and the backend. And so one element of our business model is to have differing elements of capital or differing pockets of capital that allow our platform to punch way above its weight class. And that's very different because, and we're developing that slowly, we're not there yet. We still have many pockets to fill. But within that, when we look at our own capital, but also managed capital. One of the things that we find is that because this is a cyclical business, you know, attractiveness is different at different times, being wedded to one origination channel is not the greatest thing because all origination channels produce different returns depending upon what part of the cycle they are in. Today, one can argue that if you have an amazing order book position along with the shortage that we see in the planes, those are amazing returns that people are producing on that sort of distribution. But what we have done, but that's not always the case because when it's the opposite, you're effectively taking a $40,000, $50,000 discount just to get the plane off the books if you will. So what we have done is that we have said, that instead of relying just on one channel, which is the OEM channel, we rely and keep an active presence in all four channels. So we do OEM, SLBs, trading, which is just bilateral from other counter borders, and four M&A. And if you look at how we've done, in 2017, we bought AYVAS. In 2022, we bought Sky. In 2020-2021, we leaned in very heavily on the SLB channel because we were the only lessor in the top 10 group who was not focused on reducing their order book exposure because there's no. Instead, we were saying, we have capital. Please give us product. And we were able to underwrite a lot of attractive things in the SLB channel. We also placed a tiny kind of OEM order in that. And then today, if you look at the trading channel, it is extremely attractive for a variety of different reasons. Because the capital markets are closed, the ABS market not closed, but unaccommodated. The ABS market is not particularly helpful. So the relief valve is asset divestiture. And that is creating a very attractive opportunity. So when we look at our returns. We say that one of the reasons we do so well is that we lean in on the channel at the appropriate time of the business cycle. And that for us has been fantastically helpful. I don't think we would change that going forward. So even if we had a 200 aircraft order, let's say 100 each with Boeing and Airbus, we would still contextualize that depending upon the business cycle and do a lot of the other stuff that we do as well, because M&A, if you think about AOS, it allowed us to get to scale the world, otherwise it would have taken us God knows how many years. Same thing with respect to deploying capital during the pandemic. Those returns are substantially different than kind of steady state returns. So for us, it's a multi-channel approach and we continuously want to be different. We don't want to do what other people are doing because there's no money in that. You know, we want to earn incredible returns because we're doing definitively different things.
Alok | Flightpath:
So part of that equation is your fleet type. One of the other things which stand out for me is that you have turboprops also in your fleet. And I know that is also, if I may say so, is a good ESG move. But I don't think it is just that. Given what you have just explained to me, I'm sure it makes a lot of commercial sense from a returns perspective to you for you to get into the turboprop space. How do you think that playing out the turboprop in comparison to the narrow body jets, you also have a lot of wide bodies of course, but that has traditionally been the case always, you know, but in comparison to the popular narrow body jets, how do you think the turboprops are failing?
Firoz Tarapore:
Yeah, so let me just clarify one thing. We don't do turboprops as an asset class. The only thing we do is one non jet asset, which is the ATR 72-600, right? So we don't do any other turbo even within ATR. We don't do the ATR 42-600. The only non jet aircraft that we do is the ATR 72-600. And the reason we do that. And we placed that order in 2014. So it's nine years on now. And because NAC is exiting, we're now the world's largest lessor of 72-600s. Because it is a unique product in the 70-seater market. First, its competitor is now gone. So it pretty much is the only product if you are a 70-seat operator. And the trip cost and the seat cost of that aircraft is simply unmatched by anything else in sight. There's nothing else that can come even remotely close to what an operator can get in terms of efficiency. When you then combine that with the fact that the OEM makes only between, call it 50 and 70 a year, in pandemic years, it's lower, in some years it's higher, but call it 50 to 70 a year. And you combine it with the fact that it is not overcrowded in the lessor space, all that translates into a rational economic operating environment which produces kind of very decent returns from our perspective. And if you step back, you asked me a question about narrow-bodies, if you step back and broadly compartmentalize our portfolio in four buckets, narrow-body, wide-body passenger, ATR 72-600, and our world leading position in the factory fresh 777 freighter. In terms of profitability, ATRs are way up there because of all the things that I just described. I mean, narrow bodies are wonderful and liquid, but because of the competition in there, the returns tend to have a kind of a fairly tight range to them. But in these products, not only are they liquid, meaning they will trade, and their operator base is almost as wide as a narrow body operator, sorry, a narrow body OEM product. It produces really incredible returns for us. The OEM, sorry, the ESG story is just kind of, you know, icing on the cake,
Alok | Flightpath:
an add-on
Firoz Tarapore:
if you will. It just comes with it because fundamentally it is a perfect match between operator and aircraft provider.
Alok | Flightpath:
One of the other things which you have also mentioned now in your answer, in the last question, is about the pandemic and the effects of it. I was wondering that from a corporate business perspective, has there been any changes? I know the usual things which all of them have gone through, hybrid work mode, working offline, online, all that stuff. But, I'm just wondering is there anything which you feel has permanently changed now going forward as a business for you or for any business who's running in these times in general post pandemic?
Firoz Tarapore:
Yeah, I mean, listen, the short answer is that we're still not completely out of it. And the complicating factor is that just as the pandemic was ending, we have the Ukraine invasion, which is now kind of compounding some elements in our supply chain shortage, et cetera. From our standpoint, when you take a longer term historical kind of view of what our industry has gone through. So if you think back to the 70s and the oil shock and subsequent shocks, whether it's SARS or whether it's World Trade Center, aviation in particular, or whether it's some other financial crisis after that. Right when it happens and right after it happens, you always feel that you're in the middle of a structural change. But if you let time pass, the trend line suggests that there is a very strong kind of mean reversion with a very upward bias to it. So whilst we saw everyone make incredibly fast, incredibly nimble adjustments to what they had to do to survive and to prosper. I believe that all of those were in response to an environment that is steadily becoming an environment that's kind of, you know, yeah, we had a pandemic just like SARS was a big thing and all of the other stuff that seemed, you know, nobody had flown two commercial airliners and brought down two skyscrapers before. But we were able to kind of contextualize all of that. And I think that over time, this will kind of be in that way as well. And all along the way, I believe that the industry has learned the lessons from each of those things. So now the question is, can we learn the lessons from this and can we improve our business model going, our meaning of industry going forward? And I believe the answer is yes to that question as well. You know, one of the fundamental questions is, you know, what do you do? So what do, what do lessors do when your customer loses up to 100% of the revenue? Well, what, what do you, I mean, there is no textbook that'll answer that. So in each case, I think there is a, but, but there are extremely valuable lessons that we can learn from the last 36 months that we can then incorporate into decisions that we make going forward. One of them, for example, is that all governments don't behave in the same way. When the sun is shining, lovely, but when the sun is not shining, they behave like they're non-governmental entities, which is a useful differentiator in our credit models going forward.
Alok | Flightpath:
All right, that is Ok. I was actually going to ask you to illustrate what you just explained with an example. And you're actually given a very good example already.
Firoz Tarapore:
Just don't ask me to name the government.
Alok | Flightpath:
No, no, no, I'm not going to. So I do enough business now worldwide to understand that, not to ask that question. How do you see now next five to ten years spanning out from an industry forecast? And I think this question is I'm actually more targeting to the audience back home where I am right now, because in India, there is a lot of interest now in this part of the industry. So I think I'm just wondering that if there is a message there for the capital providers or bankers to understand what the market forecast is looking like over the next few years.
Firoz Tarapore:
Yeah. Okay. Well, that's, you know, so as you know, India is not only the fastest growing market, but as we look out at the next, I believe five-ish years, India is solidly projected to become the number three market in the world. So US, China, India or China, US, India, whichever way you want. And if you look at the core numbers for India, they're just staggering in terms of how many new people get on a plane each year and therefore how many planes are needed too. And so this is not an easy one, but I was just presenting at an industry event in New Delhi last month, where the Civil Aviation Minister and some other government officials were there as well. And we were very encouraged to see the policy support that the sector is getting in terms of infrastructure investment, in terms of promoting smaller cities, the last mile connectivity, if you will, in aviation, and also the streamlining of provisions to kind of the major airlines out there. India has always been characterized by very intense price competition. So I think this is one of the things where the capital expenditure is huge, local interest rates are high, the rupee continues to devalue, etc. So there's a lot of headwinds. And within that, the intense price competition has always been an issue that people like us worry about because when you're committing so much capital, and India is our number one country by now, that how will, and as you have seen, a few operators have just not made it in the last few years. But I think that ensuring some level playing field where people can do business, I think it would be very helpful. We are seeing sector support that is very useful. The one development that I would say, which is an extremely well-intentioned development, but with a little bit of tweak, can actually provide much more tailwind to the business, is this creation of GIF City. So if you recall, GIF City is a free zone in Gujarat where the government has been encouraging outside lessors, or outside providers of capital to set up shop people, et cetera. And of course, it hasn't taken off in the way that it was intended, because the requirements are quite burdensome. So if you think about it from our perspective, we operate in 60 countries. If we had to set up shop in every country, we wouldn't make any money, because the infrastructure just doesn't work. And so therefore, we would say that GIFCity is a wonderful idea, but instead of asking lessors to be there, what we think is a better way for the government to use that structure to incentivize aviation is for each of the airlines to set up a subsidiary in GIFCity and do all of their leasing from that subsidiary, which allows us to deploy our cost efficiency, which allows them and, not only cost efficiency, there is incredible protection that comes with having a GIFCity counter-party as opposed to a mainland counter-party from taxation, from all the other things. And so I think that with some of those things, India has the potential of not only becoming a very large aviation market, but also being assured that the capital it needs to get there is readily available, because you don't want that interruption, because it takes a long time to kind of regain trust and all of these things. So I think the enablers are stable tax policies, stable infrastructure policy, and then developments around this tax efficiency, I think would be very, very helpful, and will continue to ensure that India kind of becomes, and stays right at the top of attracting capital for aviation. And aviation, as you know, is not just the business in itself. The impact on GDP, the impact on the economy in general from aviation is quite a large multiplier as lots of other nations have studied, and concluded.
Alok | Flightpath:
So to just carry on from that point, sir, what you made about airlines trying to open units there and leasing in. The way I understand the model here is if that happens, that is actually not going to cause much benefit to the airline as such, because the tax liability which an operator bears in their hand when the aircraft is anyway leased to them will remain the same. It is simply shifting the liability from one bucket to another bucket as far as they are concerned. is what we have understood so far. It may have its benefits, but in the long term, I think what the government is trying to do, and I'm sure you're already well aware, is to set up a homegrown aviation leasing ecosystem in India. Now, to your point, you're absolutely right that as a global lesser, you cannot be expected to be opening shop in every country. And I do know, and speaking to the policymakers, they're kind of expecting that from most of the lessors in some form or other, while we have been advocating a little different approach to them. Now, what you have just mentioned is very different. I have not heard this kind of suggestion before, too. Now, what I would like to also ask you is that keeping aside the fact as a lesser, whether you may open shop there or not, it's a separate thing. But I think as an industry perspective, if you have to give suggestions, if like taking an example of China- all said and done to a certain extent, China and Hong Kong have managed to create an aviation leasing environment there. They have homegrown lessors. There are arguments for and against it, but at the end of the day, they've done it. And this is, I think, what the Indian government has been trying to do since 2017-18 when they started making the rules towards this. You have rightly said they have not achieved it yet. They're trying to. So maybe one thing to learn from you is... what are your suggestions? What can they do better to allow that kind of aviation leasing ecosystem to be built in the country? If there is something which you feel can be done right.
Firoz Tarapore:
Yeah, so I think first of all, it's a broader. It's a broader question than just aviation. And I mean it in the following way. You know, India is a full democracy. India's banking system has state-owned players, but also commercial players. And India is at a different stage of economic development than China, think about infrastructure, think about other things. So the broader question, I think, from a policy perspective is, if you look at the liquidity in the Chinese banking system, which is enormous, enormous, one of the questions that I assume policymakers ask is, how do we deploy this liquidity, right? Do we fund other people? Do we let leakage in the system? Or do we use that to create a closed loop system to fund our other ambitions, whether they are in space exploration or aviation or military or whatever it is, right? And so I think from the first question is, if there is excess liquidity in the Indian banking system, which needs to be deployed for economic development, and that's hard to do it if all players are not policy players, some are commercial players. The sector prioritization is a governmental thing that they have to look at. Does aviation float to the top? And if it doesn't float to the top, you do other things that you need to do and then this kind of gets to it. If you put that aside, let's just say that you say, yes, we've got everything going, right? It is not entirely clear to me. And I would say it's not entirely wise to create a closed loop system where you're the provider and the user of capital. Because otherwise you're just kind of commingling the issues, for example. Are you better off using other people's cheaper cost of capital, because rates elsewhere are different, your rupees depreciating, etc. to fuel the growth in aviation? Or are you better using your own liquidity? Or should you use your liquidity for other more important kind of domestic priorities, if you will. I would argue that whilst on the face of it, leasing looks easy, you know, lend and whatever. It's not. There is a significant technical body of knowledge that needs to be acquired over time. And then the question is, how, what mistakes are you willing to tolerate in the meantime? Because no learning experience is free of some stumbles somewhere. And I think I believe that just takes too long. So from a policy perspective, I would argue that if liquidity is a scarce resource, which I would argue it is, that aviation needs to get that only if it is at the top of the sector. If there are other things that are more important, then those should get that. And because there is such a large global provider base of very inexpensive capital relative to domestic cost, that would be a great way to leverage other people's capital to significantly boost aviation. But it's a policy thing. I mean, it's easy for me to sit here at a desk and give this kind of perspective. But for policy, people will do different things, meaning, I say, okay, 10 years of pain, no problem because the next 100 years will be better. So I think it comes right down to that kind of thinking.
Alok | Flightpath:
OK, I think that is, I think what is important is what you have said, but also what you have not said. I think it's a very good answer, it explains. About ESG, I have seen the annual report, which has come out of the DAE ending December. Very impressive, by the way, congratulations. And what I have also noticed is that you have scored very highly on the ESG front. One is the front about diversity, of course, women participation, multi-nationalities, and the, but my interest is on the E, and the front of environment. What I wanted to understand, is there a thought process, I don't know if you can tell me, not tell me, or if it's there in the future, about looking at any radical moves in terms of investing into the new technologies in transportation space? Because I'm sure as you were also in San Diego, you would have heard a lot of talk about that recently, about investing into new tech. It's not about just hybrid fuel, hydro-electric aircraft, but now there is unmanned vehicles being tested. I'm personally very passionate about that. So I just wanted to understand, I'm just wondering, is DAE has any thoughts to do anything radical in that space?
Firoz Tarapore:
The short answer is no. I think that these are very important developments. So when you look at vertical or beta or all these other things that are going on, either VTOL or CTOL or manned or unmanned, I think those are all things that are important. But as it turns out, these projects are quite nicely funded through a variety of different investment pools that are more specifically catered to those types of investments anyway. In some cases, like vertical, it's public, but in other cases, so for example, there are large US corporations who have dedicated investment funds for environmental projects, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think for us, investing in something that is this early stage is not the right thing for us to do. One of the investment criteria that we have is, that it must have a very clear path to scale. And once these technologies are promising, they don't have a clear path to scale at the moment. And so I think we would much rather focus on those technologies that these propositions would use as opposed to the propositions themselves.
Alok | Flightpath:
Okay, short and sweet answer. No, I'll remember that. One of the things I actually like to ask is about sales, but you already told me in the beginning, your background is aviation finance. Finance is your lifeblood, sir, if I'm not wrong, right?
Firoz Tarapore:
I’m happy to talk about sales or anything else you want to talk about.
Alok | Flightpath:
Yeah, yeah. I was hoping to get a couple of insights. One is about salesmanship overall. You know, see, evasion leasing is highly marketing and sales driven. And by marketing, I mean marketing to your customers, right? That is the kind of marketing we do in the aviation leasing industry. And sales is a big part of it, relationships and how sales. I would like to know your insights on- what do you think, if let us say you are hiring, or you are looking for people to begin, or you are looking to, what kind of skill sets would you look for? What do you think counts for good salesmanship? What helps to be a success in this industry in that sense?
Firoz Tarapore:
Yeah, so we have a, just to put it in perspective, we have about 25 people, just a couple shorter than that, in our sales organization. So these are front-facing people to our customers. We talk to approximately 200 commercial airlines and approximately 100 customers. 120 of them are our current customers. It's quite a wide net that we spread. And for us, when we look at success in that side of the business, it really comes down to a few things. One is do our salespeople know what they're talking about? Which means do they have the product knowledge and the knowledge of how we construct our leasing product, to make it efficient for our airline customers to engage into a dialogue. If not, why do I want to train somebody else? So we look for people who understand the product that we deliver and that product is both a product product, like an aircraft and then the leasing tool. Second is we enable these people, but that's part of the process, to deliver to the clients only those things that the back office or the back end can deliver. So for example, it's quite easy for a salesperson to say, yeah, no problem. Let's sign an LOI. Then you go back to credit committee and they say, what were you thinking? I can't do this. I can't do this. It's a very sour commercial experience, if you will. So from a modeling, from a sales success perspective, what we have tried to do is to throttle the speed of the front and the back office in the same way so that when the front office is making representations to our clients, they're not kind of getting ahead of themselves, if you will. And the third and the last element, which I think works for us time and again, because remember, we're now doing this for 35 years, is once we say that we're going to do it, we're going to do it. Meaning there’s no crazy surprises, there's no weird U-turns, there's no nothing like that. And what that allows us to do is ensure a higher degree of success on our next transaction because everybody remembers you negotiated well, you delivered what you said, and therefore there are returns that accrue from that. There are incremental returns I would say that accrue from that. So from our standpoint, the sales process is really veterans, full understanding, full calibration with what the franchise can deliver and the franchise always delivers.
Alok | Flightpath:
Ok, well articulated. And we are at the very end. I have my mandatory question of career advice. And I'm curious because I see the new generation having different requirements. I think it's the case with every new generation, right? We're all different. So what is the career advice you will give? Because this is something which ties into the retainer-ship of staff when you bring them in, how you grow their career. But also, what advice will you give somebody who's starting to start their career?
Firoz Tarapore:
Yeah, so listen, for me, it's fairly straightforward because I'm, you know, I kind of like black and white is nice. And so I think the when I look at the folks that we have and we have we hire every year from the graduate program in Dublin and in Dubai and in other places as well. So we have a very constant supply of fresh talent coming in. And those perspectives are very useful to us as well. And I'll say the same thing that I say to just about anybody who was coming either at that level or who has spent kind of say less than 10 years but are interested in doing more. You know, there's only really one way to do really well, which is to keep your head down and just do the job that you have been asked to do or that you want to do and kind of follow your heart. So if you're a job person, work for a company, do the best you can. If you're an entrepreneur, forget all that and start the business that you can. Because if you follow your passion, you keep your head down, don't get distracted by what he or she is doing. Before you know it, you float it to the top. And it just works absolutely, kind of without fail, if you will. If you don't like, if you're in it, because you know, you know, in a few people who say, oh, well, I love the metal, et cetera. But the work is very different. And if yo find that, go do something else. But if you like it, just put your head down, do exactly as people ask you to do, or you want to do, do more than that. And it just miraculously a path opens up that has a very nice upward trajectory to it.
Alok | Flightpath:
Excellent advice. Thank you very much, sir. I would just like to know, is there any last message you would like to give?
Firoz Tarapore:
The last message that I can give is to point to an example of an entrepreneur who I'm talking to right now, who has grown the business in an amazing way in the last decade or so, maybe a little bit more. And I would say that if you're looking for an inspiration for a success story, look no further than some of the things that you have done and how you've gotten about doing that. And I think maybe you can do your audience a service by being a guest on your own show because there’s lots of good things they can learn from all the various ways in which you come to the position that you are in today. So listen, congratulations on the incredible empire that you're building and continued success in doing that.
Alok | Flightpath:
Thank you very much. This is very kind of you. I'm yet to reach a stage to be interviewed, but hopefully soon. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. And I wish you a good day and good weekend ahead.
Firoz Tarapore:
Thank you Alok, all the best!
Alok | Flightpath:
Thank you. Thank you once more. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
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