AHA! Saga of India’s first academy for air hostesses

Sapna Gupta weaved her dreams around her passion and turned it into a successful business model. The director of Air Hostess Academy (AHA), Gupta set up her company in 1997 to train students for the jobs of airhostesses, flight stewards and airport ground staff.
A travel and tourism graduate from South Delhi Polytechnic, she started working with Cox & Kings, a travel agency, in Delhi right after her graduation in 1994.It was barely four months with Cox & Kings when she was offered the post of a junior lecturer in her college by the head of the department of the travel and tourism department.
Along with South Delhi Polytechnic, Gupta simultaneously imparted lecture at Bharti Vidya Bhawan and YWCA.
In 1997, Gupta, with an initial investment of Rs 25,000, set up her classes in an apartment in Delhi’s Amar Colony area, with three students enrolled for her course. The realisation to have a training institute dawned on the major players when the HR department at Jet Airways, the first airline she approached, saw the difference between her students and the candidates they recruited.
Needless to mention, there was no looking back thereafter and Gupta started organising seminars and inviting personnel from the aviation and hospitality sector to deliver lecture at her institute.
Starting from a small nondescript outfit in the nineties, AHA—riding on an annual turnover of Rs 80 crore—today trains around 10,000 students across India every year for the services sector.
Following the success of AHA, she is currently on the verge of establishing Makeover, a venture aimed at providing initial grooming to aspiring candidates in tier two and three cities such as Bhatinda, Agra and Bhopal.
11/02/08 Shruti Chauhan/Economic Times