IndiGo names Gaurav Hazrati as business head – IndiGo BluChip, travel marketplaces and financial services

NEW DELHI: IndiGo is giving its loyalty ambitions a new lift, appointing Gaurav Hazrati as business head for IndiGo BluChip, travel marketplaces and financial services.

Announced on 30 September, the appointment puts Hazrati in charge of driving growth across IndiGo BluChip, expanding the airline’s rewards ecosystem and scaling its travel marketplace and financial services businesses.

The move comes as IndiGo looks to build a broader customer relationship beyond the flight itself, bringing loyalty, travel-related services and financial products into a more integrated ecosystem.

Hazrati brings more than 18 years of experience in building and scaling loyalty and financial services businesses across banking and digital platforms. His career has included developing multi-product businesses from the ground up and taking them through to scale, revenue generation and profitability.

Welcoming Hazrati to the airline, IndiGo chief executive officer Willie Walsh said his experience would be important as the airline expands its customer proposition.

“As IndiGo continues its transformation journey, creating greater value and deeper engagement for customers across and beyond travel will become increasingly important,” IndiGo chief executive officer Willie Walsh said.

Walsh added that Hazrati’s experience in developing and scaling loyalty and financial services businesses would help IndiGo strengthen these functions as it evolves into a global airline of scale.

For Hazrati, the new role is centred on turning IndiGo’s large customer base into a broader consumer ecosystem.

“IndiGo connects India like no other airline and has become the trusted choice of an aspirational India that is flying more, spending more and expecting more,” IndiGo business head for Loyalty, Marketplaces & Financial Services Gaurav Hazrati said.

“My mandate is to extend that trust into a consumer platform where we bring loyalty, marketplace and financial services together for the customer. IndiGo BluChip will reward people not just for how they fly, but for their everyday choices. I am glad we are already gaining altitude,” he added.

Hazrati joins IndiGo after serving as chief executive officer and director of Tata Payments. He was also president of Financial Services at Tata Digital and a non-executive director on the board of Tata Fintech.

As part of the founding leadership team at Tata Digital, Hazrati played a role in conceptualising, launching and scaling the Tata group’s loyalty and financial services businesses. His work spanned payments, credit cards, lending, insurance and investment products, giving him experience across several parts of the financial services ecosystem.

Before his Tata Group roles, Hazrati was part of the founding team at Axis Direct, the broking business of Axis Bank. He later held senior leadership positions at IndusInd Bank, where he established its digital banking business across customer servicing and acquisition, payments, investments and lending platforms.

His appointment gives IndiGo an executive with experience across banking, digital platforms and loyalty businesses at a time when airlines are increasingly looking beyond ticket sales to deepen customer engagement.

With BluChip at the centre of that strategy, IndiGo’s next leg of growth is set to be about more than where customers fly, and increasingly about what they do between flights.