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Staff post about: Vijay Mallya Become an Author

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When Mallya was invited to be the guest speaker at the Institute of Management and Technology's convocation in March 2010, he wanted to impress upon the students one key message to the secrets of success: self-confidence is the key. "I am in favour of one simple theory that the Almighty has blessed us with an equal degree of intelligence," Mallya said. "No amount of intelligence, knowledge or talent can ever replace the supreme quality of self-confidence. It is the confidence that matters the most."

Mallya encouraged the students to absorb, learn, and create their own future how they wanted to. "Thinking creatively, differently and out of the box are the attributes that are essential for the creation of world class companies and brands," he said. "Life is full of ups and downs. Failures are an inevitable part of our life. Don't let them get you down."

It is a lesson that Mallya learned as a young boy. "When I was straight out of high school, and I went to do my graduation, I was actually working as well. That's when, while going through the archives of United Breweries, which was a British company my father bought in 1947, I stumbled across this label of Kingfisher Beer that had been launched in the 1850s, but was no longer in production and sale," says Mallya.

"Something excited me about Kingfisher, you know, the bird. I saw color, I saw vibrancy, I saw movement, I saw a bit of cheekiness, you know, the kingfisher sort of fishing. And so I went to my father and asked him, I said, you know, I want to relaunch this brand and I want a million rupees for it. And a million rupees, I mean, he threw me out of the office."

Mallya was not discouraged. He had confidence in his idea to relaunch Kingfisher and, "with a great deal of persuasion," he says, he got a small budget from his father.

But the lesson really hit home after Mallya's father passed away. "Then I didn't have a dad to run to and find out, you know, if I was in trouble or I was undecided," he says. "And once I got over that, I realized that you need to go forward against all odds.

"Challenge is something you need to move on and not to be afraid of," he says. "You need to be gutsy, you need to have fire in your belly, and there's no point in being scared of the system or of people who are against you, there are plenty of them. They still exist, particularly in a country like India, where there's a lot of jealousy. And you know, you sort of march on undeterred. And so it toughened me up quite a lot, actually."

To the students at IMT, Mallya said, "The future of our country is in you." Likewise, Mallya took the ball into his own court and put the future of his life in himself.

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