After his headmaster wrote to the defence ministry, Gopinath was allowed to write the exam in Kannada and he cleared the entrance on his second attempt.

Upon retirement from the armed forces, he established an ecologically sustainable sericulture farm; his innovative methods earned him the Rolex Laureate Award in 1996.

In 1995, when the Indian government started a regulatory reforms process to encourage entrepreneurship, Gopinath partnered with Samuel and established Deccan Aviation.

[1] Deccan's helicopters were chartered by most politicians and the company also got involved in many rescue missions in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Kabul and South India.

[16] The following year, the Vijay Mallya lead UB group purchased a strategic 26 per cent stake in Deccan Aviation.

During that period, the Charter operations continued to perform satisfactorily and increased its presence in off shore flying for the oil sector.

The same year, Gopinath became the 100% owner of Deccan Charters by purchasing the stake Mallya held in the company as part of the 2007 deal.

[21] The following year, Gopinath launched daily charter flights in the state of Gujarat under the brand name of Deccan Shuttles.

The flights connected Ahmedabad, Surat, Jamnagar, Bhavnagar and Kandla using a nine-seater Cessna Grand Caravan aircraft.

[24] The 2020 Indian Tamil-language film Soorarai Pottru (or Udaan, in Hindi) was partly inspired by events from the life of Gopinath and is based on his memoir Simply Fly: A Deccan Odyssey.