Dhirubhai Ambani: "Think big, think fast"

Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani is not just the usual rags-to-riches story or a Reliance patriarch but will be remembered as the one who rewrote Indian corporate history placing the ordinary investor on the perch and building a truly global corporate group in the country.
Popularly known as Dhirubhai, the 70-year-old Ambani Sr, also changed the rules of the game in the industry in an era when the private sector was hampered by the Licence regime, even if he had attracted criticism that he did not always play fair. There is also the story of how the Ambanis blocked publication of a biography titled The Polyester Prince written by a foreign writer because they threatened legal action for anything they perceived as defamatory in the book.

Think big" was his refrain and "I am not a loser" was a phrase that epitomised this man behind the Reliance Group which started as a textile manfacturing unit but made its name later as a leading petrochemicals producer diversifying into petroleum refining, telecom and information technology sectors. Now employing a workforce of 85,000, the group's Rs 25,000 crore integrated Jamnagar refinery complex in Gujarat houses the world's largest greenfield project with a capacity to refine 27 million tonnes of crude every year. Willpower is something the boy from Chorwad village in Gujarat, who set off for Aden at the age of 17 to seek his fortune and ended up creating a Rs 60,000 crore group, India's largest business house, has in abundance. Venilal Estates Building, 3A, in Mumbai's congested Bhuleshwar, remains the nondescript five-storey chawl—surrounded by saree shops and handcart vendors—that it was in the '60s when the seven-member Ambani clan lived there with a family friend in a tiny one-bedroom flat.
Armed with a Matriculation certificate, he went to Aden only to return with a big idea of owning a petroleum company - used as he was to a job of filling petrol in Shell service station. He returned to India in 1958 with Rs 50,000 and set up a textile trading company. The Ambanis moved on. Says elderly Ramchandra Belgaonkar, a tax consultant who lived next door: "They slept on the floor and had no telephone or car...like the rest of us." Anil Ambani was born here. The Jariwala family's residence was one floor above, and they were among Dhirubhai's first business contacts in the city. Indeed, so strong has Dhirubhai's charisma been that investors often overlook the fact that in the last decade, while Dhirubhai was withdrawing from the group, Reliance was growing at a compounded rate of around 35 per cent a year—a feat unparalleled by any other Indian corporate house—and that the Patalganga and Jamnagar projects were built by his sons, Mukesh and Anil. As news of Dhirubhai's stroke spread, Reliance shares fell but saner voices agreed that it's just a knee-jerk short-term reaction.

Dhirubhai Ambani passed away on Saturday night at 11:15 pm at the Breach Candy hospital in Mumbai. The Reliance patriarch was admitted to hospital on June 24 after he suffered a cerebral stroke. Subsequently, on June 25, he suffered two heart attacks and since has was on life support system. Ambani's funeral was held in Mumbai on Sunday evening. Politicians, captains of industry, the film world, down to the ubiquitous common man -- Dhirubhai’s demise has left almost no section of Indian society untouched. The collective outpouring of grief is a measure of the amazing influence that Reliance Industries, the Rs 65,000 crore industrial empire Dhirubhai built single-handedly, commands today. Thousands thronged to take part in the final journey of one of India’s most famous sons.