By Anju
Feature: Documentary series
Languages: English, Hindi
Platform: Netflix
“The world has enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed”. – Mahatma Gandhi
Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Subrato Roy are the exact antithesis of this quote. Bad Boy Billionaires: India is an intriguing and jaw-dropping empirical saga of meteoric rise and abysmal fall of each of these three Indian business tycoons (boys here) and their obnoxious obsession with wealth and power.
Bad Boy Billionaires: India is a three episode documentary series that chronicles events of infamy of Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Subrato Roy bounded by a common thread of playing with people’s – emotions, money, lives; embezzlement of public funds; and fraudulent transactions with public sector banks. After many petitions facing stay orders and rejections by court, three out of four episodes are released. Satyam’s Ramalinga Raju’s episode is still in court. The series is as told by their family members and former – friends, business partners, editors, journalists, investors and most importantly their employees.
King of Good Times, directed by Dylan Mohan Gray, is about Vijay Mallya’s greed to want more leading to the downfall of Kingfisher Airlines. The only son of entrepreneur Vittal Mallya, chairman of United Breweries, Vijay Mallya touted as the Donald Trump of India, who loved fast cars, parties and having a good time, had to take over the mantle at 28 , after his father’s death. The episode has his son Siddharth, friends – Kiran Mazumdar, Manoviraj Khosla, Shobha De and other industry experts and journalists speak about him. Vijay Mallya launched Kingfisher beer when it was a largely conservative society in India at that time and liquor was meted out the taboo treatment and was completely prohibited. It went on it’s journey from pubs in Bangalore to becoming a lifestyle brand. Hurdles immediately followed for the liquor baron in India where advertising and marketing of liquor was banned. This became the reason for the birth of Kingfisher Airlines. His aspiration to provide luxurious experience, skyrocketed costs of what was originally a strictly economy airlines. Loans were suspiciously acquired through IDBI based on financial projections and brand image. He had to keep going back to banks to fund more cash eventually carrying a debt of 9000 crore. He was celebrating his 60th birthday with singer Enrique , when his salaried employees suffered as he made no payments to employees for months and they protested for dues to be paid. He hid his own personal assets, company’s assets, laundering money through his Formula one team. No one was quite living the life like Vijay mallya was. He is currently in London fighting the court and evading extradition to India.
Diamonds Are Forever, directed by Johanna Hamilton, is about diamond king – Nirav Modi’s fall from grace. It is as seen through former – workers, partners, advertising agent, luxury brand advisor, fashion magazine and authors. Nirav Modi appears to be a man of few words but indeed ended up doing a very big bad deed, contrary to the values of trust diamond industry is built on. He rose to prominence out of nowhere. When no Indian designer competed with foreign brands, he built a luxury brand. Coming from a family of diamontaires in diamond city of Surat, Gujarat, he began his business with his uncle, Mehul Choksi, under the name Firestar trading. Later, he built the brand Nirav Modi that was specialized in diamond cutting and polishing and competed in the global market leaders with the likes of Tiffany’s. Host of models and celebrities wore and endorsed his brand. He sourced from Golconda caves, known as Rolls Royce of diamond jewellery. He created a massive chain of stores beginning in Mumbai, Delhi in India and London to Hong Kong globally. There were brand auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. He began setting up shell companies all over the world in tax havens by inflating prices. He flourished through his designs with his smart wife Amy getting all the social connections. He started to take a series of loans by bribing officials. His salaried employees in Surat suffered when he ran away from them. Corruption charges are on him through illegal Letter of Understandings, he pledged no cash collaterals for 6.5 years and defrauded Punjab National Bank with 1.8 billion. He’s a fugitive imprisoned in London awaiting extradition to India.
World’s Biggest Family by Nick Reed, is about once unshakeable “Saharashri” Subrato Roy’s sway across India and his imminent crash. It begins with a spectacular Sahara event where lakhs of people pledge to being a part of a larger community called Sahara parivar. Sahara means “support” or “savior” but turned out to be a scam for looting money from downtrodden masses. Subrato Roy started Sahara in 1978 with common person’s money. Sahara came up with chit fund scheme in 1980s wherein low income investors often the poor were made to invest money like Rs. 10 or Rs.20 with a promise of doubling it in three years. It’s Pyramid scheme hired agents to collect these daily amounts from ill informed rural population and their money is invested and the returns again reinvested and not withdrawn till a certain period. People were in awe of Saharashri and used to fall at his feet as though Godman like. His friends were – filmstars, businessmen,sportsmen, and politicians. Sahara’s 73000 Crore business was into everything – airlines, tourism, cricket, tv channel, Amby valley, and F1 wherein there’s even a clip of him posing with Vijay Mallya. Investigative journalist Sharad Pradhan has done a tremendous job in the expose. Subrato’s troubles started when two of his companies were to become public. He ran into scrutiny with SEBI that said if people have invested money then he has to comply returning to them. He has denied all charges. Arrested and lodged in Tihar jail for two years, Subrato Roy was released on bail.
Rishi Rich’s beginning song sets the mood for each episode to reach it’s crescendo. I must say the docu-series was a trip down the memory lane as the incidents, interviews and people shown were whom I had seen a long time ago on TV. Though we know of the proceedings already, I really enjoyed the series as though it was all a thrilling heist drama in being curious to know what unfolds later. Though the documentary is about Indian businessmen, not many documentaries come out of India by Indian documentary makers. It’s a well documented series showing both the positives and negatives. It makes us ponder how such greed and corruption gets to one’s head where the person doesn’t even realize what they have committed by creating huge disparity and unequal distribution of wealth. The men who had been messaiahs to the common people become fugitives finally as a result of hubris. What is bad is bad. And boys will be boys. Nothing was ever enough for them and more than monetary success they notoriously eyed global domination.
Stars: ***.5
My thoughts 