Indians Run for the Exits, Taking COVID Risks With Them to Nepal, Dubai From a Dying Nation
As India logs another 400,000 new infections in a 24-hour period, efforts to contain the worsening crisis have failed and now everyone from middle-class Indians to migrant workers are getting out as fast as they can.
Private jets, often used primarily by Bollywood glitterati and business moguls who left weeks ago, are now being booked by the middle class who are spending their life savings to save their lives.
JetSetGo CEO Kanika Tekriwal told CNBC’s Street Signs Asia that her company has seen a 900 percent increase in bookings, but it is not her usual clientele. “To say that only wealthy Indians are leaving India on private jets would be wrong,” Tekriwal said Thursday from her own safe haven in the Maldives. “In the last 10 days, what we have really seen is anyone who can put together the resources and the means to pool in money for a private jet, or to pool in money just to get out of the country, getting out.”