Kingfisher Airlines' trademarks to be auctioned on April 30

After a failed attempt to sell Kingfisher House, the headquarters of liquor baron Vijay Mallya-owned defunct Kingfisher Airlines (KFA), lenders will now auction the trademarks of the airline on April 30. 

Bankers will auction trademarks including 'Kingfisher logo' and its once famous 'Fly The Good Times' punch line. The reserve price for the trademarks, which also include Flying Models, Fly the Good Times, Funliner, Fly Kingfisher, Flying Bird device, has been kept at Rs 366 crore.

In March this year, lenders made an unsuccessful attempt to auction Kingfisher House. The auction failed as none of the bidders came forward due to high reserve prices of Rs 150 crore.

Lenders had taken over Kingfisher House in February 2015 in a bid to recover part of their dues totalling over Rs 9,000 crore, which includes unpaid loans and accrued interest.

Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) had pledged the trademarks as collateral with banks at the time of taking loans from them. 

The online auction is being conducted by SBICAP Trustee Company, a subsidiary of SBI Caps, on behalf of lenders.

According to a valuation report from Grant Thornton, the brand value of Kingfisher Airlines stands at $550 million (nearly Rs 3,659.01 crore) on the resumption of operations. The airline's brand had been registered separately from the Kingfisher beer trademark. 

The auction of Kingfisher Airlines in unlikely to generate any interest from bidders as the value of brand has deteriorated, experts said. 

"KFA brand value has deteriorated in last few years. In this case, the owner has been the ambassador of the brand and the way Vijaya Mallya has been behaving, there are some negative connotations which are being associated with the brand. I don't think the auction is going to generate too much interest," N Chandramouli, CEO, TRA, a brand intelligence and data insights company said to PTI. 

"If at all, it could see some interest from players who are from other sectors and want to enter the aviation industry,"Chandramouli added.

(With PTI Inputs)