Like Mallya, buyer of his villa a man of spirits

SACHIIN JOSHI had walked into the Candolim Kingfisher Villa in 2005 and promised himself that some day he would live in a “house this beautiful”.

Well, he now owns that very house. Two days back, Joshi, the chairman of Viiking Ventures, finished buying the villa reportedly for Rs 73 crore.

Joshi remembers that day back in 2005. “It was a party, I recall,” Joshi said over the phone from London.

Vijay Mallya, whose Kingfisher brand ran the slogan the “King of Good Times”, had thrown a party. Joshi said he was “overwhelmed by the scale of the place”.

He did meet Mallya in the years later, occasionally, but he was always surrounded by people. “He was too large to even have access to him,” recalled Joshi, who is also a film producer and the owner of Goa King’s Beer.

Joshi admitted having some similarity in business interests with Mallya. The Viikings ventures sells an energy drink called XXX and a vodka mix.

The company owns Planet Hollywood in Goa and a hotel in Mumbai. Joshi also holds the licence for Playboy Clubs and Playboy Beer Garden. The group owns the Celebrity Cricket League team Telugu warriors. Viiking Media and Entertainment, a group company, co-produced Aishwarya Rai’s comeback venture Jazbaa.

“They are all lifestyle brands,” Joshi said. “We are selling the way to live,” he said.

This was the third time Mallya’s house was put on the block. Joshi’s team has finished the formalities of buying the three-acre property.

When the house came on the block the third time, Joshi said his team got in touch with SBI CAP, which was auctioning the property, to understand how to get into the race.

When he first heard about the possible sale of the property, Joshi made a few calls to see the response. “I found that people were not going forward for some stupid reasons, some superstitious, some calling it jinxed,” said the businessman who has numerology in his name. “I do not believe properties can ever be jinxed. It’s the wrong decisions that can.”

Joshi, who had acted in films, said he would not “lose the essence of Mallya’s tasteful styling. But it’s mine now, so it will have my signature too.”

In the coming months, he would be busy shaping his next venture. “It’s getting into NBFC. I am shaping a product which will be like a gateway payment. Around us, the business that will work in this setting is the digital way of payments. We are in the process of a business venture.”

Joshi said his first love will always be the movies. “I grew up in Pune and my house shared the wall with FTII (Film and Television Institute of India). When I was eight years old, the students had walked up to me and asked if I would work on their documentaries. Then, till the age of ten I was approached by the students to act in their college projects. I grew up watching movies and soon got offers from a southern movie industry where I am still invested. I acted in a Hindi movie too,” he said.

Joshi will be travelling to Goa to see his new acquisition soon. But he is not done. “To own an aircraft. It should have my house and everything I need. I just want to fly,” he said.

When told that is a Mallya quirk too, he said: “Let’s say I love to live life. What’s the point if it’s not large?”

Sachiin Joshi