Success story of Dr Vijay Mallya

Success story of Dr Vijay Mallya

Personal life

Mallya born in a Konkani Gaud Saraswat Brahmin family originally from the town of Bantwal (near Mangalore) in Karnataka. He is the son of Vittal Mallya and Lalitha Ramaiah. He was educated at La Martiniere Boys' College, Kolkata and completed his degree at St. Xavier's College, Calcutta under Calcutta University. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Business Administration by the California Southern University Career Mallya worked for the American Hoechst Corporation (now Sanofi-Aventis) in the US and with Jenson & Nicholson in the UK. Since 1980, he assisted his father, the then Chairman of The UB Group, in managing the important Brewing and Spirits Divisions and in re-launching the Kingfisher Brand of Beer. Mallya, was elected by shareholders as Chairman of UB in 1983, at the age of 28. AN EMPIRE AT 27 Despite Mallya’s obvious success, his freewheeling lifestyle long cost him the respect of India’s straitlaced business community. Mallya was only in his 20s when his father died in 1983, leaving him in control of an empire with annual revenues of $100 million. He spent the next two decades winnowing the 22 businesses he inherited-ranging from a brewery to a drugmaker to a battery manufacturer-to just a half-dozen. Those he kept, though, have flourished. Today, revenues for the UB Group run to $1.2 billion. Yet for years, Mallya was dogged by allegations that he dipped into his companies’ coffers to fund his lavish lifestyle, something he vehemently denies. “I was born with a silver spoon, so why should I spend the company’s money?” he says. It wasn’t until Mallya launched Kingfisher Airlines in 2005 that he earned the corporate acceptance he craved. With its seatback video screens, smartly dressed flight crew, and attentive service, Kingfisher raised the bar for domestic Indian carriers. The five Airbus A380 superjumbo jets Mallya has on order will surely generate additional buzz. After the Deccan acquisition, Kingfisher will be in a strong position to take advantage of an expected doubling in India’s air passenger traffic, to 60 million, by 2010. “Mallya has become an important part of Corporate India,” says Vijay Chugh, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.  in Mumbai. “The airline business has changed his profile completely.” Now, he’s aiming to go global. Mallya hopes to begin Kingfisher flights to the U.S. and Britain by the end of the year. He’s also stocking up his liquor cabinet. The Whyte & Mackay acquisition gives him an international brand in spirits to add to the French wineries he bought last year from Champagne Taittinger. (He wanted the bubbly, too, but was rebuffed.) The spate of dealmaking has powered a 150% increase in the market capitalization of his eight listed companies over the past year, to $3.5 billion. Still, Mallya remains quintessentially Indian. He refrains from negotiating during Rahukalam, the hours during the day that some Hindu faithful believe are unlucky. And he has his planes blessed at Tirupati, a Hindu temple in southern India, before putting them into service. That’s not to say, though, that he thinks his current streak is just a run of good luck. “I had to show the world that I was quite capable of standing on my own feet, making money and shareholder wealth,” says Mallya. “And doing,” he adds with a smile, “what the hell I wanted to do.”