High on Kingfisher

Nisha Das
01 February 2005

Nisha Das catches liquor baron Vijay Mallya in high spirits during an interview on Kingfisher – the beer and the airline.

It may have been an exciting birthday gift that UB group's chairman and Rajya Sabha member of Parliament, Vijay Mallya, may have presented himself with, but it is also a dream deal for his shareholders. On Sunday, December 19, 2004, a day after he turned 49, Mallya announced that he had entered into an agreement with Britains' largest brewer, Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) for selling a 37.5 per cent stake in United Breweries Ltd.

The previous day, his birthday, Mallya had signed one of the biggest airline deals with the Airbus group, buying another 20 aircraft for the UB group's proposed Kingfisher Airlines, which will take wings with the company's corporate red and kingfisher as its emblem and logo. The UB-S&N deal is likely to change the current market equations in the Indian beer industry while the airline deal is expected to alter the airline industry.

All these changes in the UB group and the areas in which it operates just underscore one point: — the house that the late Vittal Mallya (Vijay Mallya's father, and founder of the UB group) built is once again going through a major transition.

Prior to joining UB, Mallya worked for Hoechst in the US and the UK. Interestingly, he became the chairman of the company in India, then called Hoechst Marion Roussel India (now Aventis) in 1994, and chairman of Aventis CropScience (prior to its acquisition by Bayer) in which the UB group had become the second-largest shareholder.

Way back in 1980, he began assisting his father who was then chairman of the UB Group, in managing the brewing and spirits divisions. In 1983, when his father passed away, Mallya took over as chairman. His flamboyance (often a source of much consternation to his mother, Lalita Mallaya), however, did not get in the way of business.

Displaying flashes of his father, in 1986, Mallya made his first acquisition — the UK-based Berger Paints with operating companies across four continents — and subsequently sold it in the '90s. He also founded a software company in the US in 1993, which was listed on the NASDAQ in 1996.