It’s the jewels you notice first. Before you clock the surprisingly dainty shoes, apparently handmade; before you tot up the four BlackBerrys and the three briefcases (metal, Louis Vuitton and crocodile) and the bottles of Fiji water and expensive red wine on the sideboard; before any of that, it’s the sheer bling of Vijay Mallya, business tycoon, Kingfisher beer owner and India’s King of Good Times, that grabs you. There’s the enormous diamond in his earlobe, the multicoloured gold-set gems on one finger and the diamond the size of a small pebble on the other. There’s the outsize watch snuggling up to the religious prayer string. Understated he is not.

In India, schedules are rarely made and always broken, a principle the Mallya entourage carries overseas: meetings start late, overrun and day merges into night. Today, Mallya, 52, has taken up temporary residence in a suite at the Four Seasons, appropriately London’s least minimalist hotel, while he waits for an end to the building and wrangling over planning permission for his house in Regent’s Park. The suite reeks with the smoke of his small, dark cigarettes. Everything about him points to a man used to getting his own way, and not to be crossed.

But then you don’t get to be worth £4 billion, with interests in everything from beer to aviation, and from fertiliser to Formula One, without knowing what you want. And what Mallya wants at the moment is a successful international airline. His United Breweries Group, the third largest spirits business in the world, has long since launched Kingfisher beer to a grateful world. Three years ago, it started Kingfisher Airlines, which was promptly voted Best New Airline of the Year, and went on to be voted India’s favourite carrier in a Times of India poll. Last month, it went international, with the first Bangalore-London flights, and next up, it’s London-Bombay.

On Kingfisher Airlines, Mallya boasts, the food, comfort and safety are the best, and the air hostesses the prettiest. Skytrax, which rates airlines, certainly agrees with him on the first two, and has given Kingfisher a coveted five-star award, something it shares with only five other airlines, including biggies such as Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines. (They rate air hostesses for their efficiency and language skills, not their prettiness.) “We redefined flying in India,” says Mallya with characteristic bullishness. “People were shocked when I launched domestic flights with caviar and smoked salmon for breakfast. It was something India had never experienced before.”

But to anyone who queries whether now is a good time to become embroiled in international aviation, the figures seem to speak for themselves: India has the fastest-growing aviation market in the world, yet, according to Mallya, 70 per cent of it is controlled by foreign airlines. In the three years since Kingfisher Airlines launched, passenger numbers in India as a whole have grown from 14 million to a whopping 43 million, and Mallya thinks he’s still only scratching the surface. If flying from London to Scotland gets too expensive, he reasons, you can take the train, or drive. Neither is a viable option in India, not least because of the size of the place.

His logic goes as follows: even if you assume 600 million of India’s population never sees the inside of a plane, that still leaves him with 600 million potential passengers. And even if you divide that in half again, that’s still 300 million potential passengers – and that 300 million is the Indian middle class, which is growing ever more prosperous, and ever more desirous of flying from Mumbai to Delhi and from Goa to Bangalore.

“You are,” says Mallya triumphantly, “looking at an addressable market for air travel the size of Europe. America has 300 million potential flyers and 5,000 commercial aircraft. India has the same number of people and 400 aircraft. It doesn’t require a genius to figure out what the upside is… But if you want to be a serious airline, you can’t remain a domestic airline.”

And Mallya wants to be taken seriously. He is impatient with the people who focus on his love of ostentation: for having the longest yacht, the most houses (26, allegedly, although he disputes this and says some of them are company houses), the biggest collection of cars (“250? Somewhere round there”). He is the King of Good Times because, he says, he is an ambassador for his brands.

“I live life on my own terms. I love what I do, I love living my life the way I do. A lot of people, particularly in India, question every move that I make… But more and more I said to myself, ‘Why do I need to explain?’ It’s not right that I sit here and do nothing but either blow my own trumpet or defend myself.”

He is not given to modesty: asked how his shareholders would describe him, he says he doesn’t know, but that he gets standing ovations at AGMs. Does he agree with those who have dubbed him the Richard Branson of Asia? “Maybe it should be the other way round.” He’s met Branson – “He came on board my yacht when he was in Bombay” – and thinks he’s a great entrepreneur: “Bloody intelligent, very affable, we got on famously. There are a lot of similarities in the way we do things.”

But as for being influenced by him, then no. “If anyone tries to transplant a successful, internationally accepted business model on to India, they’re bound to fail, because India is so unique. At the end of the day, I have to apply my own mind to a situation that nine times out of ten is uniquely Indian.” To illustrate this, he cites an ongoing dispute with the Indian government over the fact that (he says) aviation fuel costs 70 per cent more in India than anywhere else. He has to buy fuel from state oil companies that, he complains, don’t have a transparent pricing mechanism, but do impose a 32 per cent sales tax.

“If [British Airways’] Willie Walsh is grumbling and moaning, imagine what it’s like for us?” he complains, spreading his arms helplessly. “17.5 per cent is bad enough… but 32 per cent?” Maybe they’re worried about carbon footprints. Is he? He sidesteps neatly. “The Indian fleet in the Indian skies is probably the newest in the world. I would assume that the manufacturers of new-generation airplanes, Airbus and Boeing, largely, would have taken the emissions issue into account when designing their new planes.”