Biz is art of the possible: Gopinath

BANGALORE: Indian entrepreneur GR Gopinath likened rival Vijay Mallya to someone from Venus and himself to a Martian who wouldn't be able to do a deal. When it came to survival, he changed his mind.

The former Indian Army artillery officer sold 26 percent of his Air Deccan on Thursday to Mallya's UB Group to gain a 5.5 billion rupee (135 million dollars) lifeline for India's largest discount airline, struggling with losses.

"Like politics, business is the art of the possible," said, Gopinath on Friday.

There couldn't be two men more different than the low-profile Gopinath, 55, and Mallya, 51, a flamboyant liquor baron who in 2005 floated a premium airline he named after UB Group's best-selling beer, Kingfisher.

The village-bred Gopinath, who saw action in the 1971 war between India and Pakistan, had a school teacher for a father.

After leaving the army in 1979, he took to growing coconuts and bananas on a farm he built by the side of a stream in Karnataka state.

The first-generation entrepreneur, now balding and bespectacled, started Air Deccan in 2003, taking less than four years to turn it into India's biggest budget airline with a fleet of 43 aircraft.

The suave Mallya, who last month bought Glasgow-based Scotch whisky maker Whyte and Mackay, was born into wealth, inheriting the two-billion-dollar UB Group in 1983 from his father Vittal.

The cigar-puffing, ostentatious showman sometimes referred to as "India's Richard Branson," lives up to the Kingfisher slogan: "The King of Good Times," making no secret of his fondness for the high life.

Mallya sports Armani suits, owns a fleet of vintage cars and a yacht, maintains vast mansions around the world decorated with the works of Picasso and Chagal and pilots his own personal jet.

"We are from different planets; he is from Venus, I am from Mars," Gopinath retorted in May after Mallya publicly said he was interested in acquiring Air Deccan.

"We are from the opposite ends of the business spectrum, consumer models and consumer space," he added. "We are mining the bottom of the pyramid, he is picking the cream off the top."

But Gopinath, after weighing five other potential investors, opted finally to sell the Air Deccan stake to Mallya, a man whom he had likened to a "kid in a toystore" who wants to buy everything in sight.

The liquor tycoon's offer valued Air Deccan at almost 100 million dollars more than rival bids, making it irresistable for an airline struggling to cope with soaring costs and desperately needing cash to stay in the skies.

The tie-up will enable Air Deccan to cut costs by sharing aviation infrastructure and ground staff with Kingfisher and enable both, with Airbus-dominated fleets, to negotiate better terms with plane manufacturers, Gopinath said.

For Kingfisher, which has a fleet of 27, the stake is a "huge step forward in our stated goal of becoming the country's largest private carrier by 2010," a UB group official said from Mumbai.

Gopinath stressed that the purchase was an investment like any other, but it leaves open the possibility of an outright acquisition of Air Deccan by UB Group, which has made an open offer to buy a further 20 percent of the airline.

The entrepreneur, whose future at the helm of the no-frills airline had been in doubt until Mallya came to the rescue, said he had been mistaken about the liquor tycoon's intentions when he lambasted him for eyeing the airline.

And his company's survival was of paramount concern. "It's not a question of personal egos," Gopinath said Friday. "We have to do whatever is good for the business."