With one of the world's most expensive yachts and a cricket and Formula One team, billionaire Vijay Mallya is known as India’s Richard Branson or simply, the “King of Good Times”.
Owner of the world’s second-largest liquor maker, it is his chairmanship of debt-ridden Kingfisher Airlines that is currently making headlines, not the usual write-ups in society pages of his jet set lifestyle.
Mallya, who prefers to be addressed as Doctor for his honourary PhD in Business Administration, was typically pugnacious as Kingfisher looked headed for a financial disaster with mass cancellation of flights and the resignations of dozens of its pilots.
“I am absolutely committed to keeping the airline going unless some government agency wishes to ground it,” the silver-haired 56-year-old told reporters. “The point is our bank accounts have been frozen by income tax authorities very suddenly and that has crippled us.”
Mallya's ascent to the forefront of the business elite has shadowed India's own rise as an economic power. But his troubles coincide with the country's slow growth, high inflation and corruption scandals.
His larger-than-life achievements, travels on his yacht, Scottish castle, beachfront mansion in Cape Town and general playboy image, fascinate many Indians aspiring for wealth after generations of forced frugality. But it jars with others in a country where around half live in poverty.
To cap his commercial achievements, Mallya was elected in 2010 to the Rajya Sabha as an independent.
“While he was doing well, he was signifying the resurgence of India. To a very large part of the middle class, he was what everyone wanted to be,” said Prahlad Kakkar, a well-known advertising executive, recently. “He was the symbol of new India - flamboyant, high-risk, wealthy and not ashamed of it.”
“Now when everyone is tightening their belts .. there is an eerie feeling that he's irresponsible.”
Kingfisher has become one of the main casualties of high fuel costs and a fierce price war between a handful of airlines which, between them, have ordered hundreds of aircraft for delivery over the next decade in an ambitious bet on the future.
Mallya has vowed not to seek any bailout from the government but has been non-committal on whether he will plough any of his own funds into the airline.
The ownership of Kingfisher Airlines, which used to fly one in five passengers in India’s domestic market, made Mallya most famous. The airline's share is now half that.
