INDIA: India's Biggest Airline In Initial Share Offering

Indian budget airline IndiGo plans to conduct an initial share offering this week as it seeks to raise as much as 32.68bn rupees ($500m; £325.6m), according to reports.

The share offering would be India's largest since 2012.

Owned by InterGlobe Aviation, IndiGo is the country's largest domestic airline by market share.

The public offer is set to open on Tuesday and close on 29 October.

It proposed to list on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India.

Global coordinators of the share sale include JP Morgan, Barclays and UBS, according to the firm's preliminary prospectus filed in June.

The firm warned in its initial prospectus that there was "no assurance that the new routes which we expand into will be profitable or become profitable."

IndiGo's international destinations currently include Singapore, Dubai and Bangkok and consultancy firm Centre of Aviation (CAPA) said it has been the only consistently profitable carrier in the country for the past seven years.

IndiGo said it may not be able to successfully implement its planned expansion of its route network "due to factors beyond our control" - including economic, political and business conditions.

From its inflight magazine named after the airline code - called Hello 6E (think about it) - to the novelty packaging for snacks, IndiGo is trying to stand out from its rivals.

And the unusual policy of forcing female cabin crew to wear a wig if their hair doesn't meet the airline style never stops being a bit weird.

But for investors, what appeals about IndiGo is that it is profit-making, with big expansion plans: hundreds of new Airbus planes on order to meet future demand from the growing number of Indians who can afford and want to fly.

In August this year the budget airline finalised a deal with Airbus to buy 250 A320neo aircraft.

The deal followed a series of orders Indigo has placed with Airbus, as it continues to win a bigger share of India's fast growing aviation market.

The agreement was Airbus' single largest order by number of aircraft and was worth a $26.5bn (£17bn) at list prices.

IndiGo was founded in 2006 by travel entrepreneur Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal, a former chief executive of US Airways.