Vijay Mallya: Smart Millionaire or Poor Businessman?

Bangalore: Vijay Mallya is currently the Chairman of the UB Group – an Indian conglomerate, with diverse interests in brewing, distilling, aviation, pharmaceuticals, real estate, engineering, fertilizers, biotechnology and information technology. He is the son of industrialist Vittal Mallya. He took over as the chairman of the company at the age of 28 after his father's sudden demise in 1983.

When it comes to the ‘billionaire world’ in India, Vijay Mallya needs no big introduction. His main highlights were the Kingfisher Airlines, Kingfisher Beer, UB group, Force India F1 and the Royal Challengers Bangalore IPL Cricket Team. He was listed amongst the top 25 billionaires in the world in 2008-2010. Mallya was always a high-stakes business operator. He built the liquor and beer businesses to a vast empire, which he had inherited from his father.

But his Kingfisher Airlines have been doing really badly for the past couple of months, and has indeed gone bankrupt. Also the company has been unable to pay salaries to its employees for the past several months, and it’s been heard also that Kingfisher airlines has had trouble paying their fuel bills as well.

As the company failed to respond to the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation), the license of Kingfisher airlines was suspended on Oct 20, 2012. Now the airlines have officially been asked to vacate premises and received eviction notices for defaulting on rent payments on a most properties since November 2011.

As per State Bank of India, Kingfisher Airlines has accumulated losses which are nearly to 9,000 crores. On October 12, 2012, a non-bailable arrest warrant was issued against Vijay Mallya, and four other directors of Kingfisher Airlines, by the 13th metropolitan session’s court, Hyderabad. This warrant was issued for the charges involving a cheque bouncing that has to be paid to GMR Group.