Arun K Chittilappilly, MD, Wonderla Holiday, assessed the damage from the lockdown and the road to recovery as India comes out of the brutal second wave.

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The company doesn’t have too much of a cash loss and has been able to control its costs. “Our burn rate is roughly about 2-3 crore a month,” he said.

“The moment we are able to open our parks, we are able to get back into some kind of black levels. We are predicting that this year, we should be able to open for at least six months out of the 12 months, that will put us in a pretty decent space,” he added.

Wonderla Holidays’ Bengaluru Resort was allowed to re-open with a 50 percent capacity on Monday. “Bengaluru is our biggest and most profitable part. Roughly, about 40 percent of our revenue comes from Bengaluru. We have got the go-ahead for Hyderabad also. We should be able to open the parks slowly one-by-one maybe within the next one-two months,” he said.

On demand, he mentioned, “There is a lot of latent demand. We are embracing the digital marketing strategy.”

The company is also looking out to see how it can work on its expansion strategy. We have already spent about Rs 100 crore in Chennai, we need to spend another Rs 200-300 crore to make that park operational, he said while adding, “Right now, in the pandemic, it is hard to continue on the expansion but as soon as normalcy returns, we will start our expansion plans.”

The company is also in talks to take over some of the existing parks to operate them without investment, he said.

There is still no debt on the books. “We still have sufficient cash reserves for us to last for another year of this,” he shared.

For the full interview, watch the accompanying video.

(Edited by : Dipika)

First Published:Jul 6, 2021 10:53 AM IST