Bird Group’s Executive Director Ankur Bhatia passed away on Friday at the age of 48. He suffered a massive cardiac arrest, according to reports. Bhatia is survived by his wife Smriti Bhatia, an architect, and his two children – Arnav and Saina. He steered the group’s strategic axis to create manifold drivers of growth that made substantial contributions to the company and industry at large.
Bhatia also moulded and executed blue ocean strategies that bolstered the overall brand proposition and precipitated a vault in core business value by identifying new growth avenues. Bhatia is credited with playing an active role in shaping the course of the Indian tourism and hospitality sector. He brought the travel tech brand Amadeus to the Indian sub-continent in 1994, which currently is the market leader in offering travel technology to airlines and travel airlines.
TAAI pays tribute to Ankur Bhatia, “We are shocked and deeply saddened about the demise of our dear friend, colleague and a visionary in the trade, Dr. Ankur Bhatia. Ankur was a dynamic leader with a vision in the Travel, Tourism, Hospitality, Aviation trade in India. He was a true entrepreneur and a visionary at heart. Soft-spoken, courteous, energetic, full of life and loved by all in the Industry. His untimely death due to cardiac arrest this morning has brought us all to tears.”
In keeping with Bhatia’s commitment towards carving the future of mobility in the country, Bird Group forayed into the electric mobility space and has been persistently adding new-age mobility vehicles to its subsidiary Bird Electric’s product portfolio. As the executive director, Bhatia also led the growth for the group in the hospitality sector, under Bird Hospitality Services, to lay new standards and world-class hospitality assets through Roseate Hotels & Resorts. He is also credited to have launched India’s first natural and perennial indoor ice-skating rink and cafe – iSKATE in Ambience Mall, Gurugram.
