Quotes from Vijay Mallya

I am pretty tough as a boss.

Banks are there to support businesses that have justifiable needs.

I think it is better when people with their own businesses and means of income join politics as there is some degree of honesty and integrity.

I live the way I want to live, and I don't comment on the way that other people live.

I think that the poorest of the poor... look up to wealthy and successful Indians with some degree of respect and pride.

Everybody keeps saying that India's a poor country. Yes, we have poverty. But I blame the government of India, the political establishment, for their failure to educate and therefore their failure to control the poverty.

Our culture in India is not a culture where we grudge each other.

Any serious airline has to look at a worldwide network.

I'm no hardened criminal who the authorities need to hunt.

I do not believe in hypocrisy.

Whenever I do something, it is rooted in the Indian opportunity.

I am an Indian to the core.

If you want India to lower tariffs and facilitate more free trade, then I think Indian producers also have a right to enter the European market.

It's not quite right to be sitting outside India and to be judging what is happening in India.

I run my own world, because I very firmly believe that my destiny, my future, is in my hands, and I don't want to blame anybody else for the path that I take.

At age 26, I was chairman of UB Group but living like a 26-year-old. I lived my age. Which youngster doesn't like a Ferrari? Which youngster doesn't like a good time?... but my contemporaries were R. S. Goenka and Dhirubhai Ambani, captains of the industry but twice my age. You wouldn't necessarily expect them to be driving around in Ferraris.

One of India's biggest advantages is our young demographic and that we have a youthful population that is indeed our future.

We have broken the shackles of conservative socialism. The growing middle classes want the kind of standard of living you enjoy in the West. So what I'm selling is a lifestyle.

I'm not a T.G.I.F. guy. I get off a plane at 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm looking for my secretary because I want to know what's going on.

I'm a person who promotes the concept of accountability to a great extent, and I've spoken in the Parliament and reinforced the need for accountability.

I don't like to leave anything unfinished on my desk before I travel.

Rather than spend millions getting film stars, I am quite happy to be brand ambassador myself.

My father was very clear; I had to have an ordinary upbringing. I was put to work as a lowly-paid trainee after college. I didn't like it at the time, but I can't help but feel that that was probably the best thing for me.

If you work for a team, you have a different view, if you own a team you have a radically different view.