the goan I network
PANAJI
The list of Goans striking it big in foreign lands and earning international acclaim and recognition for their professional careers just got longer by one.
Taleigao native Vito Gomes who owns and operates a global aviation services company just got ranked 50 in a 2019 Forbes list of top 100 Indian leaders making an impact in the Middle East.
An alumni of the prestigious city school Don Bosco High School, Gomes had left the shores of Goa to traverse the seas and earn his bread over three decades ago but hasn’t severed his umbilical connection to his homeland.
He comes back home in Taleigao nearly a dozen times in a year and has established a commercial basis vegetable and fruit farm on his ancestral family land holdings to do his bit to arrest the trend of real estate expansion replacing green cover in his village.
In the list released by Forbes, Gomes is ranked at the 50th spot in the company of 100 other Indian business leaders who are making an impact in the oil-rich Middle East. Also featuring in the list uploaded on the prestigious international magazine’s
portal www.forbesmiddleeast.com are Firoz Allana of the IFFCO group, P Menon of real estate monolith Sobha, CMD of Neelkamal group Ashok Awtani among others.
Founder and CEO of Aviation Services Management (ASM), Gomes established his company in 1998 in the United Kingdom and has since headquartered it in the Middle East. It is one of the leading global brands in the flight support industry with operations in multiple countries.
It provides comprehensive, A to Z aviation support, products and services for commercial and Global over flight & landing permits, ground handling, aircraft fuelling and fuel savings programs, first class crew and passenger amenities, enhanced flight planning, weather & NOTAMs, air charter and corporate jet management, aircraft registration & re-registration, crew management and recruitment. Despite globe trotting to manage his company’s operations, Goa is close to Gomes’ heart and he takes special interest in the commercial scale farm he began to set up in Taleigao seven years ago on family land holdings.
“I began farming in Goa because of the indiscriminate destruction caused by the real estate sharks in Taleigao which was basically an agricultural village,” Gomes told The Goan. For three consecutive years between 2014-17, Gomes also won first place for being the highest supplier of locally grown vegetables to the Goa State Horticulture Corporation.
Earlier this year, he had also challenged in court the Taleigao ODP finalised by the Greater Panaji Planning and Development Authority after it refused to consider his objections to several roads proposed in it cutting across paddy fields including his farm.
