It started as a joke. Vijay Mallya, once called India’s ‘King of Good Times’, dared his builders to lift his childhood home and place it atop a skyscraper. They did. The result is Bengaluru’s most talked-about penthouse, a 40,000 sq ft sky mansion sitting above 34 floors of Kingfisher Towers at UB City, now a disputed property with no legal owner and no one living.
Mallya, one of India’s biggest financial defaulters and the former chairman of United Spirits, the largest spirits company in India, with brands like Kingfisher and Royal Challengers Bangalore under its umbrella, revealed the origin story of his sky mansion in a 2025 podcast with Raj Shamani.
The land at the heart of Bengaluru (then Bangalore) was his father’s residential plot, nearly 700 years old, Mallya said in a podcast to Raj Shamami. A brewery house had stood on it for over a century, and in many ways, it was also Mallya’s childhood home, where he grew up and where his father lived, in the well-known Bengaluru bungalow.
The developers who wished to build the 122-metre Kingfisher Towers approached him, arguing that developing the land would be highly beneficial for the company, with significant profit potential. But they faced a difficult challenge. Mallya told Irfan Razack, the Managing Director of Prestige Estates Projects and a close friend, “If you lift this building and put it on top of the tower, I’ll agree.”
His only condition to the builders, Prestige Group, was simple: “If you can lift it, build it.”
And that is exactly what they delivered. Vijay Mallya‘s childhood home now sits above the skyscraper the company built for profit.
40,000 sq ft and Rs 66 crore: private elevator, infinity pool, and more
What remains inside, though, are unfinished fragments of Mallya’s life. Caught in legal controversies, the disputed property no longer has a clear owner. Aerial footage of the tower reveals that the sky villa effectively recreates the experience of a landed estate, It is complete with open decks, gardens, and recreational spaces, at a height of nearly 400 feet above ground.
It’s a two-floor bungalow with dramatic white colonnades, a wide porch, and a rooftop. The towers consist of approximately 82 ultra-luxury apartments, each spanning around 8,000 sq ft, useful context for showing the scale of the building Mallya sits atop
Shaped like a replica of the White House, it is reportedly 40,000 square feet and was once valued at Rs 66 crore, according to a MagicBricks report. The penthouse is famous not only for its backstory but also for the amenities on Floor 34. Complete with a helipad, indoor heating, spa, salon, gym, lobbies and a mammoth parking capacity for vintage cars, apart from offering a 360-degree view of UB City. The mansion can only be accessed through a private elevator that goes straight to the top.
The towers also promise a luxurious experience for residents, with private access to spas, an infinity pool, and a gymnasium.
Financial Express Online reached out to Prestige Estates Projects, but they declined to comment.
Does Mallya really own 26 properties?
Pushing back on this figure, Mallya told Raj Shamani that it was a “hugely erroneous exaggeration.” However, he acknowledged that his family’s trust had been used to acquire real estate in several parts of the world. “I have properties in England, in America, where my kids live, and I have a lovely property in France,” he said.
“I also had a big brewery business in South Africa; we had a home in Cape Town. But it was sold when the business was sold,” he told Shamani, adding that these were the only properties he had owned.