Bad Boy Billionaires: India

Welcome aboard.

I mean, there's so many firsts on board this Kingfisher "Funliner" as I call her,

stuff that's never seen before in Indian skies -

fabulous flight attendants, they are all models,

in-flight entertainment, the widest seat in the sky.

So, I think we have a winner on our hands.

Vijay Mallya was a kind of urban legend.

There was no one else who appeared to be living the dream

the way Vijay Mallya was.

Every time you pointed to this wasteful personal expenditure,

he would say, "I am the brand."

Everybody is with you when you're on the top.

When you start crashing, everyone runs for their lives.

That's what happened with Vijay.

London's Westminster Magistrates Court

is all set to hear the extradition case against the former liquor baron.

We have presented the evidence against Mr. Mallya

on charges that he's been an economic offender.

Mr. Mallya, last question about the witnesses, sir.

Please, stop bothering me.

The only difference between a petty criminal and Vijay Mallya

is he wears suits and throws lavish parties.

You're not going to get an answer. The answer will be given to the judge.

He needs to pay for what he did.

Listen for yourself and make up your own mind.

We want your thoughts. - No, no.

So far, so good-- - It's not-- It's not my job to comment.

Hiding your own personal assets,

hiding your company's assets, sir.

Laundering money through your Formula One team.

I bet he goes to bed every night saying,

"Why didn't I pay the damn money?"

I'm not going to comment.

I will not allow you to make any sort of judgements based on my comment.

...a fugitive of the law, Mr. Mallya.

No comment.

They need a scapegoat,

they need a political pawn, they need a man to make an example of.

- The allegations are baseless,

and, uh, you will see our submissions in court.

But that one airline just did him in.

If that hadn't gone wrong, Vijay would be king today,

everybody would be bowing down and touching his feet, even now.

Liquor baron Vijay Mallya lived up to his reputation

as the "King of Good Times"

with a birthday bash that was celebrated with exuberance,

extravagance and flare.

We're all a part of this wonderful celebration

of Vijay's 50th rocking birthday bash.

He is truly the King of Good Times.

I can't think of anybody else

who has the flamboyance to throw a party like this.

Well, I think anything that Vijay Mallya does is always stylish.

Fifty years is obviously a big birthday, so the celebration matched it.

My father, he has always been a flamboyant individual.

I don't know where it came from or what started it,

but certainly, he's always had that "King of Good Times" persona.

I don't think you can get any bigger - I mean, lights, the party, Lionel Richie.

In 2005... everything was great,

and I just saw this meteoric rise and I would go around with my dad.

The pride I had was immense.

Everyone viewed him as this man with the Midas touch.

It's what he had worked hard for

and he was getting the recognition that he deserved.

At that point,

no one would have foreseen what ended up happening, right?

Vijay's father, Vittal Mallya, was the chairman of United Breweries...

this big empire of, uh, brewing.

Vijay was the only child of his parents.

He was spoilt as a kid with all these expensive toys,

like electric trains and a battery-operated Ferrari.

His father was a very wealthy man...

a very astute and shrewd businessman.

The brewing business was very difficult

because alcohol was something that was taboo.

For a long time in India,

the kind of moralism and political pressure

that surrounds the liquor industry

has meant there's this impulse to enforce prohibition.

Because of the way drinking figured in colonial culture,

it received a lot of contempt from the country more broadly.

In India, we have the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi,

who was convinced that alcohol was one of the world's great evils.

Mr. Gandhi,

do you intend to have complete prohibition in the new Indian State?

Oh, yes.

Absolute prohibition? - Absolute.

The threat of prohibition has always meant

that the industry's had to keep a pretty low profile.

Vittal Mallya was this rather secretive millionaire,

and it was almost as though he paid to keep his name out of the papers.

It's fascinating that it was his son who turned all of that on its head.

By the time Vijay Mallya was in his early 20s,

he was already like a famous hellion who loved fast cars.

Vijay was hugely interested in motor racing,

which was an activity considered to be unsafe by his father.

Well, his father didn't think

it was conducive for him to becoming a serious businessman.

Then, finally, I think in '82, '83, he won the Indian Grand Prix...

so he was the national champion.

But he, kind of, got side-tracked by-- Like, life happens.

Vittal Mallya had this massive heart attack

and collapsed and died.

Vijay was devastated...

because I don't think anyone expected his father to have such an untimely death.

As a 28-year-old,

it suddenly was a huge shift from being a very carefree, young man,

to suddenly holding these huge responsibilities

of now having to run this business empire that his father had created.

He wanted to prove to himself and the world

that he could do justice to his father's empire.

He wanted to be perceived as someone who made it even bigger.

Vijay Mallya arrives on the scene and takes over UB in 1983,

just as the Indian economy is about to transform.

India was a country with a lot of young people,

there's a lot of aspiration,

and he's in charge of this company

as India turns into a consumer economy.

And Vijay Mallya recognized that this was a sort of perfect storm

of conditions in which to transform

the way India saw alcohol and saw drinking culture.

When he inherited the business,

among all the brands that were there,

Kingfisher's the one which excited him the most...

and he had a vision for it.

Vijay Mallya was one of the first to recognize

that the social air of a British pub

was something Bangalore was just waiting to host.

In the mid-80s, Bangalore became, sort of, this young, youthful city

where everything was happening...

because of this young sort of image and the IT crowd.

Macram...

Get me one more.

The first pub started in Bangalore called "The Pub".

Kingfisher saw this as a great, sort of, market.

They started serving draft beer

and Bangalore's one of the only places which had this in the country,

and that sort of went, boom.

People wouldn't say, "Give me a beer." It was, "Give me a Kingfisher."

The Pub was relaxed, it was positive,

it was affordable, and it was safe for women.

So, from the initial success of this one pub,

five years later, Bangalore had forty pubs.

In the beginning, there were political parties

that, sort of, freaked out and said, "This is not Indian culture."

He didn't care.

He just wanted it to become bigger and bigger.

And he made it huge.

Vijay really did want public recognition,

he did want to be known,

he did want people to acknowledge that, "Oh, Vijay Mallya. Who is he?"

I'm a friend of Vijay Mallya's.

I've known him for 30, 40 years.

- ...for a minute. Hi. Hi.

- This is the BBC team. - Hello.

I just told them that you're known by various names,

"the Prince of India," "the Maharaja," "the richest man in India"

and that you have one of the most, frankly, flamboyant styles

of any industrialist in this country.

- Really? - Yeah. This whole, uh...

- A very, very glamorous lifestyle and-- Is that-- Is that true?

Not exactly.

I don't know what yardstick you would like to measure it by.

Well, my first impression was really, "What a flamboyant show-off."

Your cars, for instance.

Um... I drive a Mercedes, I have a BMW,

I fool around with a Porsche and a Maserati occasionally.

And I liked that about him so much because,

in a society where everybody is playing coy

or playing themselves down

and discretion was everything,

and he came along and, uh, kind of, shook up everybody.

Now, you've been compared to Donald Trump,

so how do you feel about that?

Well, I don't know Mr. Trump personally. I've read a lot about him.

- He obviously likes to live his life. Yes.

- As I do. As you do.

But, um...

I'm not yet anywhere near bankruptcy.

Right.

Being one of the richest and, perhaps, a very powerful man in India...

Mm-hmm.

...do you have enemies? - Many.

Many? - Mm-hmm, plenty.

Mallya had this golden goose in his empire,

but it was also one that, politically, was becoming increasingly unacceptable.

In some parts of India, there were complete bans on alcohol sales.

For instance, the state of Gujarat in the north of the country,

where Prime Minister Narendra Modi would eventually emerge as a political force,

you couldn't sell alcohol at all.

People have very much accepted and appreciated prohibition

and they want more of it.

And at the same time,

India's government dealt a real blow to Mallya's empire