Kanika Tekriwal beat cancer at 22, then co-founded one of India’s biggest private aviation firms

In her early twenties, Kanika Tekriwal had a clear plan. She had grown up obsessed with aviation, studied abroad, worked on aviation business development in the UK and the Gulf, and was preparing to start her own aviation business back in India. At 22, that plan paused. She was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and instead of spreadsheets and pitch decks, her year became chemotherapy, radiation and the slow, ordinary work of staying alive.

She has talked publicly about how the diagnosis stripped a lot of noise out of her life. Once she recovered, the aviation business she had been planning no longer felt like a career choice. It felt like something she was simply going to do. In 2014, she co-founded JetSetGo with Sudheer Perla. Today, it is widely cited as one of India’s largest private aviation platforms, flying business leaders, ministers, sportspeople and ordinary travellers across the country.

An unusual obsession out of Bhopal

Kanika Tekriwal grew up in a traditional Marwari business family in Bhopal, in central India. She did part of her schooling at the Lawrence School, Lovedale, before completing higher studies in Mumbai and, later, an MBA at Coventry University, UK, in 2011. By her own admission, aviation was an unusual passion to pick up as a young girl from a non-aviation family. She used her early career, including a stint with Aerospace Resources while studying in London, to learn the mechanics of private aircraft operations: how aircraft are owned, leased, maintained, scheduled and marketed.

What she saw in India was a strange paradox. The country had a growing class of business travellers who needed private flights for productivity reasons. It also had a lot of privately owned aircraft that sat idle for most of their life cycle. The two sides barely talked to each other. Private aviation was fragmented, opaque and famously hard to book without inside relationships.

JetSetGo: an aggregator with a flying licence

JetSetGo, co-founded in 2014 by Kanika Tekriwal and Sudheer Perla, set out to solve that mismatch. The business operates in two layers. On one side, it aggregates private aircraft from owners and operators across India, putting their idle capacity to work. On the other, it gives customers, corporates, families, dignitaries, a single, transparent way to book private jets and helicopters at short notice.

Over the years, the company has expanded into managing aircraft on behalf of owners, operating a fleet of its own, running maintenance and crewing operations, and building digital tools that look more like a modern travel-tech product than the legacy private aviation industry was used to. The company is headquartered in the Delhi NCR, with operations across major Indian airports.

Flying the country in a crisis

JetSetGo’s public profile grew sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic. As commercial aviation was disrupted, the company ran charters for essentials, flying medical teams, ferrying critically ill patients, helping with repatriation, and supporting state and central authorities with logistics. For a private aviation business that had mostly been associated with luxury, the moment was a significant pivot point. It positioned JetSetGo, and aviation in general, as a real piece of national logistics.

Kanika Tekriwal has often used that period in interviews to re-anchor what JetSetGo is. It is, in her telling, not a luxury service. It is an aviation infrastructure company that happens to fly small aircraft instead of large ones.

Being a woman in private aviation

Globally, private aviation is one of the most male-dominated industries in business travel. In India, where female founders are still rare in deep operational sectors, Kanika’s presence on rooftops, hangars and runways has taken some getting used to for the rest of the industry.

She has been generous in interviews about what that early phase looked like: visiting airports to inspect aircraft and being mistaken for a flight attendant; turning up to vendor meetings and being asked when her boss would arrive; having her competence repeatedly tested in conversations that would not have happened to a male founder. None of it stopped the company from being built. Most of it, she says, eventually stopped happening, as the company’s performance became impossible to ignore.

Awards, recognition, and a louder narrative

As JetSetGo has scaled, Kanika Tekriwal has become one of the most recognised young Indian women founders globally. She has appeared on lists such as Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia and BBC’s 100 Women, and is regularly invited to speak about women in deep-tech and infrastructure businesses.

That visibility matters because aviation, like fintech and deep tech, has long suffered from a story problem: it does not look like a place where young Indian women can build companies. Every time Kanika Tekriwal talks publicly about aircraft maintenance, pilot rosters, or fuel logistics, that story problem shrinks a little.

“I almost died at 22. After that, deciding to start a company was the easy part.”

What founders can take from the JetSetGo story

JetSetGo is, in a sense, an existence proof for two different ideas at once. First, that aggregation models work even in deeply traditional industries, if the founder is willing to do the unglamorous work of trust-building with incumbents. Second, that women founders can build, and lead, companies in the heaviest, oldest, most-male sectors of the Indian economy.

The deepest lesson, perhaps, is the one Kanika Tekriwal herself comes back to. Time is the only resource a founder cannot raise more of. Surviving cancer at 22, she has said, made her enormously suspicious of plans that involve waiting. Build now, with what you have. The runway is shorter than you think.

Frequently asked questions about Kanika Tekriwal and JetSetGo

Who founded JetSetGo?

JetSetGo was co-founded in 2014 by Kanika Tekriwal and Sudheer Perla, headquartered in the Delhi NCR. Kanika grew up in a Marwari business family in Bhopal, did her schooling between Bhopal and the Lawrence School, Lovedale, and completed an MBA at Coventry University, UK, in 2011. Before JetSetGo, she had spent time in private-aviation business development in the UK and the Gulf. Her career plan had originally been to launch the company at 22, but a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma at that age paused everything by roughly two years.

How is JetSetGo structured as a business?

JetSetGo operates in two layers. On one side, it aggregates private aircraft from owners and operators across India, putting their idle capacity to work. On the other, it gives customers, corporates, families, dignitaries, a single, transparent way to book private jets and helicopters. Over the years, the company has also expanded into managing aircraft on behalf of owners, running its own fleet, and operating maintenance and crew services, making it closer to an aviation infrastructure company than to a pure travel platform.

Why did COVID-19 reframe what JetSetGo is?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, with commercial aviation disrupted, JetSetGo ran charters for essentials, flying medical teams, ferrying critically ill patients, helping with repatriation, and supporting state and central authorities with logistics. The reputational reset was significant. For a private aviation business that had mostly been associated with luxury, the moment positioned JetSetGo, and Indian private aviation in general, as a real piece of national logistics. Kanika Tekriwal has used that period in subsequent interviews to re-anchor what the company is.

What can founders take from the JetSetGo story?

JetSetGo is an existence proof for two ideas at once. First, that aggregation models work even in deeply traditional industries, if the founder is willing to do the unglamorous work of trust-building with incumbents. Second, that women founders can build and lead companies in the heaviest, oldest, most-male sectors of the Indian economy, aviation being among the more difficult of them. The deepest lesson Kanika herself returns to is about time as the only resource a founder cannot raise more of, which is what surviving cancer at 22 made unforgettable for her.

What is Kanika Tekriwal’s net worth?

Kanika Tekriwal has been reported at over ₹400 crore in rich-list coverage derived from a Hurun listing (around 2021). That figure reaches us through secondary reporting rather than a primary disclosure, so it should be read with that caveat; JetSetGo itself is privately held and does not disclose her personal net worth.