Business planning with subsidiaries

Meet Delip Prasad - Senior Associate at MAI

October 24, 2019

While planning the business is the most essential part in any industry, it is also bears challenges. Therefore, the main question for which business planning is giving an answer is - What are we going to do? That’s the most important question, in private life as well as in a professional career. Crucial methods to answer this question are defining goals, setting targets and formulating objectives. In a nutshell create a strategy. Nevertheless, a strategy can be fulfilled by making use of different business models. Business planning presents options and discusses potential outcomes with clients or stakeholders.

My own career within the Munich Airport family evolved nearly the same way. Five years ago, I started as sales associate at the international business division. I had the chance to experience numerous impressions regarding the sales and acquisition procedures as well as onsite consulting projects and supported our management during the transition of the business into the wholly owned subsidiary Munich Airport International (MAI). When taking a position in MAI’s business development department, my previous experiences proved to be very helpful. I am now responsible for planning and developing the entities operating on behalf of MAI’s vision. To create a successful and comprehensive business plan, it is important to communicate with various experts and consultants of our team and integrate their detailed knowledge. Only then, we can form a bigger picture combining the strengths of our experiences and kick off great business models.

Delip Prasad, Business Operations Manager at Munich Airport International
Over the past five years, Delip worked in various departments of Munich Airport's international business before joining the business planning department of MAI. © Munich Airport International GmbH
Meeting situation at Munich Airport
Meeting situation at Munich Airport © Flughafen München GmbH

In 2018 and 2019, MAI transformed itself into a bigger scale group of companies and created three active subsidiaries. After many intends and consulting projects with investors in this field, MAI planned and implemented its new US-based companies. During the planning stage we faced many obstacles and challenges. The main being the development of a number of companies with completely different setups, objectives and purposes. Hence, the first internationalization was not quite as easy. Not only do we have to consider our own strategic objectives – profitability, efficiency and quality. On top, we have to factor in the requirements of clients, partners and shareholders:

  • Requirements of a client while developing the airport/terminal operating companies.
  • Requirements of a partner company while creating a joint venture.
  • Requirements of shareholders while merging other companies into MAI’s group.

Being part of the team, making sure that a smooth transition of knowledge and a successful start of operations is possible, gave me the opportunity to learn with every new milestone of the projects. The main takeaway of the new endeavor was that the key to success is heavily dependent on the right use of given information. Based on the data provided during our due diligence, we were able to effectively apply our concepts and plan according to the requirements mentioned above as well as to the local and regional requirements we faced in the country itself.