spirits products in the world and owns five of the 10 fastest growing brands in the world in their respective categories. The brewing division holds a 60-per cent market share in India and its Kingfisher brand of beers is sold in 32 countries.

Earlier Mallya worked for the American Hoechst Corporation (now Sanofi-Aventis) in the US and then with Jenson & Nicholson in the UK. From 1980 till his elevation as chairman, Mallya assisted his father, then the chairman of the company, in managing the brewing and spirits divisions of the company and in re-launching the Kingfisher brand of beer.

Mallya is the chairman of the boards of companies in India as well as in the US. He held the chairmanship of Aventis Pharma India (previously Hoechst) and Bayer CropScience in India (previously Agrevo) for over 16 years.

In government
He has served as an elected member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house) of the Indian Parliament and has served as a member of various Parliamentary committees and on defence, science and technology, environment and forests, and industry.

Awards

• Mallya was nominated 'global leader for tomorrow' by the World Economic Forum, Davos, in 1995
• Over the years he has been conferred industry awards for his contributions to business

In sports
He is a keen sportsman, aviator and yachtsman of distinction, championship horse breeder, and professional racecar driver. Mallya not only participates in sporting events but also supports sporting activities worldwide, in aid of the underprivileged.

In business
On assuming chairmanship in October 1983, Mallya initiated the process of defining a corporate structure with performance accountability, and inducting professional management to create individual operating divisions out of the various businesses of the group that included pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, paints, petrochemicals and plastics, electro-mechanical batteries, food products and carbonated beverages, a fast-food pizza chain and several medium and small scale industrial units.

In 1990, Mallya led the restrucutring of The UB Group, retaining only the areas of core competence, transforming the vastly diversified UB conglomerate into a handful of key operating businesses that dramatically increased shareholder value.

In a leveraged buyout in 1988 Mallya acquired the global Berger Paints Group with operating companies across four continents and divested it at significant value in 1996 through a successful exit strategy that included five initial public offerings on the stock exchanges in London, Singapore (Main Boards), Nairobi, Jamaica and Abidjan.

In 1993 he founded UBICS, Inc, listed on the NASDAQ in 1996, a leading global provider of a broad spectrum of IT services and IT products for the vast US market.

Mallya personally steered The UB Group's entry in civil aviation with Kingfisher Airlines, launched in May 2005. The full service luxury domestic airline operates a fleet of 13 brand new aircraft that provide 70 daily flights connecting 16 cities. In its first year of operations Kingfisher Airlines was awarded service excellence awards.

Social initiatives
Personally and through his businesses, Mallya contributes to charities and foundations in several countries. In addition, the super speciality Mallya Hospital, the Mallya-Aditi School and the Vittal Mallya Scientific Research Foundation in Bangalore, India, are some of the foundations with which he is personally associated.