Dr. Mallya loosens his purse strings…

Dr. Vijay Mallya… who doesn’t know this guy? And if you don’t, you probably have been living under a rock..he’s the Chairman of United Breweries,the world’s 2nd largest spirit company. Apart from that, I’ll easily call him the most flamboyant person in India Inc. His yachts, his cars, his attitude, his tightly clad air-hostesses following him everywhere, the calenders, ah…. life must be good if you’re in the shoes of Vijay Mallya.

But what caught my attention lately was the fact that he’s been on an absolute rampage acquiring firms all over the world. He first announced his arrival in Formula1 by plastering the Kingfisher logo over the ToyotaF1 team cars. You see, the colours matched, thats the reason why he probably selected Toyota. He’s the kind of sponsor F1 should have, you know. Work hard, party harder. Because his parties were amazingly lavish and gave the Red Bull F1 parties a run for their money. Even Bernie, F1 supremo, absolutely loved them, and who wouldn’t, when you get such fine free parties.Jokes apart, India’s F1 prospects certainly received a shot in the arm.

He then set his sights on Deccan Aviation and after numerous bitter-sweet press comments, he picked up a 26% in it. We knew that was coming, because Deccan certainly wasn’t in a good shape, Capt. Gopinath was off his rocker for a bit, and it badly needed some deep pocketed investor, like Dr. Mallya

In June, he caught hold of a Scottish whisky maker by the name White and Mackay for almost £600 million.And we know(er… I don’t actually) what good whisky the Scotch brew. That was a good wake up call for anyone who discounted Dr. Mallya and United Breweries.

And now, in his personal capacity, he has brought a controlling stake in the Spyker Ferrari F1 team for a sum of £80 million. Which means that our poor Indian chaps like Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandhok can expect to land themselves a seat at SpykerF1. Woot woot!! The Indian flag will hopefully soar again over the grandstands and we all know whom to thank. Cheers,hic!

Stop press!!

This morning when I got up, I read in HT Mint that he’s going to buy a controlling stake in a US based private aircraft manufacturer called Epic for $200mn. Will this man ever stop?? Your guess is as good as mine…

Sania Mirza on a roll…

I’m just charting Sania’s performance these days, and the graph seems to going just one way… up, except that small blip in the form of Sania’s defeat at the hands of Chakvetadze (these Russians, I tell you, they can use their names for the World Tongue Twisters Bank) in the Stanford Cup final.

The ascent started with the Stanford cup, with Sania successfully showing Akiko Morigami the door with a 4-6, 7-5, 7-6 (7-5) win. She went on to upset the 19th seeded Tatiana Golovin of France with a comprehensive 6-4, 6-1 victory and zooming into the finals to face that tongue twister I mentioned earlier. She lost alright(6-3, 6-2), but she’d regained her confidence and had become a force to reckon with. And oh, she’d also won the doubles cup partnering Israel’s Sahar Peer successfully demolishing Victoria Azarenka of Belarus and Anna Chakvetadze(ask Sania, how sweet revenge tastes!).

All this hullaboo made sure that Sania jumped to 31 in her WTA singles rankings and to 26 in her doubles rankings…

Now you’re sitting up in your chair, huh? And that also silences all her critics with her new found cofidence, and I can sense a load of improvement in her strokes… she just needs to cover her ground better.

And now she’s serving her aces at the Acura Classic defeating Sahar Peer(her doubles partner) and Eleni Daniilidou from Egypt. Now she’s bumped into Maria Sharapova for the quarter finals.. and the chances that she’ll advance are less… but the entire nation’s there with her.. Go girl go!!

McLaren Mercedes MP4 20 in Mumbai

So, Johnnie Walker wants to announce that it has arrived in India and that too in style. So what better way to do it than use their association with the McLaren Mercedes F1 team.

They go out in all force and print ads in leading newspapers accross the country “Going Soon..” on 23rd and 24th December at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse.

And when we go there, we find out its meant only for members of that club, a sort of VIP event as of 23rd. But i’m a rebel. A born one, and never the one to let go of things so easily. I barged right in and had a word with the Johnnie Walker Managing Director(the man was really cool and nice, i must admit). The press was waiting, and so were some people who had come from far off places like Bangalore. They had to take the covers of the car.

And cellphones weren’t allowed as well. Why you ask? There was a race in progress, so due to the reasons best known to the club, phones were a strict no-no at that goddamned time. So I took permission of at least 4 top people in the club saying that we were from Johnnie Walker itself(God bless that Johnnie Walker MD for giving us this cracker of a idea) before clicking away some 4-5 photos. Good adventure. Whew!!