New Delhi, March 28 -- One moment explains Gorur Ramaswamy Iyengar Gopinath better than any business school case study. Standing in Phoenix Airport in the early 2000s, he noticed a board indicating 1,000 daily flights. He compared this to India, where all 40 airports with daily connections likely had fewer flights combined. Gopinath sensed the opportunity with the instinct of a man incapable of accepting things as they are.

Born on 13 November 1951 in Gorur, a village in Karnataka's Hassan district, he grew up in a Tamil Iyengar family of modest means. His father, a school teacher, initially taught him at home. Not fluent in English, he took the military entrance exam in Kannada with special dispensation and went on to the National Defen...