New York:
A lion-maned airline baron with a voracious appetite for publicity, love of fast cars and a bevy of beautiful, red-skirted female employees was suddenly under fire.
A once-fawning press made scathing allegations, there were rumors of a bankruptcy and analysts speculated about the prospects for the sale of nearly every asset in the mogul's disparate group of companies.
No, we're not talking about Vijay Mallya.
We're talking instead about the man Mr. Mallya often seems to have based his business strategy and personal image on - Richard Branson - about a decade ago. At the time, analysts and reporters were very skeptical about Mr. Branson and his Virgin Group companies.
Even as he was being knighted "Sir Richard" for his "services to entrepreneurship," serious questions were being raised about Mr. Branson's business model, his management skills, and how much cash there might be, anyway, in the Channel Islands private trusts that held the Branson family money, and presumably funded his expensive hobbies.
Mr. Branson's dabbling in some industries (Virgin Cola, anyone?) had clearly been a mistake, and he owned a mixed bag of retail and airline and railroad assets, most of which were losing money. His endless publicity stunts, which included stripping naked with the cast of The Full Monty, and posing on a giant mobile phone in Times Square (to launch Virgin Mobile in the United States), seemed to tire even him.
An article about Sir Richard in The New York Times from 2002 might trigger a severe case of deja vu for anyone watching Mr. Mallya now:
"Worth an estimated £1 billion, according to a list of wealthy Britons from The Sunday Times of London, Sir Richard has certainly embraced the trappings of a tycoon. He owns an Oxfordshire home that sits on a 450-acre estate, complete with its own cricket field and Indonesian teahouse. He also owns a town house in London and Necker, a resort in the British Virgin Islands.
But a growing number of critics contend that Sir Richard's charm and knack for publicity shelter a financial house of cards. Sir Richard and his deputies, these people say, routinely make aggressive projections that are rarely achieved, creating the impression that his companies are performing better than they are."
While it is easy to draw parallels between Sir Richard and Mr. Mallya, when you strip away the swimsuit calendars and the Formula One teams, Mr. Mallya's approach to business looks downright boring by comparison.
There may be no clear end in sight to losses from Kingfisher Airlines, but unlike Sir Richard, Mr. Mallya says he isn't asking banks and investors to take a haircut on loans. United Group's bedrock alcohol business is still a cash-spinning machine. United Spirits earned 1.1 billion rupees ($22 million) in after-tax profits in the most recently reported quarter ending in June, and United Breweries earned 400 million rupees. While the decidedly unsexy fertilizer business isn't the stuff of calendar girls or a sports team, it also had a solid quarter, with a net profit of 309 million rupees in the last quarter.
A defensive and bristly Mr. Mallya, who once courted the press, has taken to insulting them instead: "Was virtually accosted by a frenzied media. Finally they started assaulting each other," he said on Twitter Tuesday.
Rather than getting riled, the person often called the "King of Good Times" may want to once again take a page from the Branson playbook.
By the time questions about his empire started bubbling up, Sir Richard had already brokered a 49 percent sale of Virgin Atlantic Airways to Singapore Airlines in 2000 - an option Mr. Mallya seems to be pushing for with his recent lobbying for foreign direct investment by overseas airlines. Sir Richard also sold off chunks of his flashy retail outlets, Virgin Megastores, and brokered a more than $1 billion buyout of Virgin Mobile to NTL in 2005, which would net him a massive stake in NTL and an estimated £165 million in branding rights. Questions about his solvency dried up after that.
Sir Richard's high profile and scatter-shot approach to start-ups continues, from wines to books to balloon rides. Some start with much fanfare and quietly fizzle out, like peer-to-peer lending through Virgin Money, while others, like Virgin America airlines, continue despite losses and recent technical glitches.
Virgin Group now looks a little bit like a marketing company, with buzzy taglines like "Relax and Have Fun," a green energy focus and attention-grabbing initiatives including space travel through Virgin Galactic and a "First Times" social marathon, in partnership with Facebook. Sir Richard, now 61, has practically created a virtue out of his companies' ups and downs, recently launching a "Screw Business As Usual" entrepreneurship conference, which he publicized through his blog.
As India's King of Good Times battles through this year, he might do well to hold Mr. Branson up as an example yet again, leaving out, perhaps, the whole stripping naked business. Do some deals, your highness, and keep on smiling.