Quotes From Dhirubhai Ambani

Personally I admire Dhirubhai Ambani’s  way of not  letting  other people circumscribe his dreams.I believe that if a person can dream up something he/she can do it.It may take time and effort and persistence but its not impossible. Personally I believe dreams are worth fighting for because they are a representation of out truest self and out innate abilities.Anytime I have self doubts I find that reflecting on incidents from his life gives me courage.After all life has not tested me in the way it did him.And anytime anybody tells me that something is undoable in one lifetime I just tell myself to see how far Dhirubhai came in one lifetime.Following are some quotes from the great man.Use them to spur you on in life.

“Only when you dream it you can do it.”

“For those who dare to dream, there is a whole world to win!”

“I, as school kid, was a member of the Civil Guard, something like today’s NCC. We had to salute our officers who went round in jeeps. So I thought one day I will also ride in a jeep and somebody else will salute me.”

“I am deaf to the word “no”.”

“Think big, think fast, think ahead. Ideas are no one’s monopoly”

“You have to take the calculated risk,to earn something”

“If you’re born poor its not your fault but if you die poor its your fault”

 “The problem with Indians is that we have lost the habit of thinking big!”

“Tax is for the poor or the stupid people.”

“You do not require an invitation to make profits.”

“A vision has to be within reach not in the air. It has to be achievable.”

“I live the Gita.”

” You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.Better we keep biscuits and go.”

“Don’t give up, courage is my conviction.”

“Keep your morale high, in spite of setbacks. At the end you are bound to succeed.”

“Challenge negative forces with hope, self-confidence and conviction. I believe that ambition and initiative will ultimately triumph.”

“Often people think opportunity is a matter of luck. I believe opportunities are all around us. Some seize it. Others stand and let it pass by.”

“If you work with determination and with perfection, success will follow.”

“Secret of my success was to have ambition and know minds of men”

“We bet on people.”

“Meeting the deadlines is not good enough, beating the deadlines is my expectation.”

“Between my past, the present and the future, there is one common factor: Relationship and Trust. This is the foundation of our growth”

“We must always go for the best. Do not compromise on quality. Reject if it is not the best — not only the best in India, but globally.”

“Pursue your goal, even in the face of difficulties. Convert difficulties into opportunities.”

“I have trusted people and they have put their trust in me. I have encouraged youth, and they have never let me down. I have asked my people to take initiative and to take risks. It has paid me rich dividends. I insist on excellence. This helps us to be leaders. Reliance is built on some of these principles.”

“My fulfillment lies in the satisfaction of every member of the Reliance family, comprising thousands of workers, managers, business associates and over five million shareholders. Being instrumental in creating wealth for over 5 million Indian families, and bringing prosperity and well being to their life is the best source of satisfaction and joy for me.”

“Reliance’s success is a reflection of India’s capabilities, the talent of her people and the potential of her entrepreneurs, engineers, managers, and workers.”

“I dream of India becoming a great economic superpower.”

“True entrepreneurship comes only from risk-taking.”

“We cannot change our rulers, but we can change the way they rule us.”

“Does making money excite me? No, but I have to make money for my shareholders. What excites me is achievement, doing something difficult.”

“I consider myself a pathfinder. I have been excavating the jungle and making the road for others to walk. I like to be the first in everything I do.”

“There is no question about that (retirement). Business is my hobby. It is not a burden to me. In any case Reliance now can run without me.”

“We must learn to trust. For several centuries, Indians have been brainwashed to distrust other Indians. This saps national energy. Distrust kills initiatives. Distrust compels people to maneuver and manipulate. Trust and transparency stimulates entrepreneurship.”

“A motivated manpower is the most important thing.”

“One must have ambition and one must understand the minds .. of men.”

“My commitment is to produce at the cheapest price and the best quality.”

“The most important external environment is the government of India. You have to sell your ideas to the government. Selling the idea is the most important thing,and for that I’ll meet anybody in the government. I am willing to salaam anyone. One thing you won’t find in me and that is an ego.”

“Controversy is the price to be paid for success. You must understand human psychology. Because, not so long ago, I was just a riffraff boy and people would say: ‘Who is this Dhirubhai? He was merely a hawker who used to wait outside our cabins.’ This is the truth and l am not ashamed of that. My skin, fortunately, is very thick! However, the fact remains that when an elephant walks, dogs tend to bark.”

“…..just because the government gives you a piece of paper,it doesn’t automatically mean that you can raise money from the capital markets, or put up plants in record time. And give sensible returns to shareholders. That’s 98 per cent of the work. The paper work is only 2 per cent.”

“Ncvcr. Till my last breath I will work. To retire there is only one place–the cremation ground.”

“I do not give attention to anything except Reliance. I am not a director in other companies. I am not actively participating in any associations or in anything else. My whole thinking, one hundred per cent of my time, from morning till evening, is about how to do better and better at Reliance.”

“Business and its expansion takes up all my energy. I have not been able to devote enough time for social work and I feel sad about it. But, in another sense, 23 lakh shareholders plus countless others have benefited directly or indirectly from Reliance’s success. Still,in the area of social work a lot needs to be done.”

“It [further education] is most essential,otherwise I would not have educated my sons. I learnt the hard way.Maybe if I had some education my success and growth would have been quicker.”

“I wanted to earn a living. I wanted to start earning as quickly as possible. I was not looking at life from any other angle but the angle of how to earn. I wanted to make a success of whatever I did. That was the paramount thing in my life. ”

“Our backgrounds were so different. At that time we were worried about spending even ten rupees and here this company would not hesitate to send a telegram worth, five thousand rupees. They didn’t care. Whatever information must come, must come. In those days there were no telexes. So they used to send telegrams of five thousand words, even twenty thousand words. It wasn’t an extravagance. It was the need for doing the right thing at the right time.”

“I had dreams of starting a company like Burmah Shell.”

“I was very happy there. I had my own car and flat,but a time came when I wanted to do something on my own. Yes, I could have done some business in Aden itself but I wanted to do something in my own country. So on December 31, 1958, I landed in Bombay to start my own business with a few thousand rupees.”

“I was primarily involved in general merchandizing ,Reliance Commercial Corporation was an export house which dealt basically in commodities like ginger, cardamom, pepper, turmeric, cashew nut etc. We had a lot of connections in Aden and we exploited these connections to export a wide range of commodities. Aden being a free port had tremendous demand for a range of commodities.”

“Suppose you and I go to the Taj to have drinks.One bloody drink costs sixty-five rupees. But all the same we have a few drinks and come out as if nothing has happened. If a person from my village comes to know that I have spent five hundred rupees on just a few drinks,he’ll be shocked. He’ll say this fellow has gone mad, saala company ka diwala nikaal deyga. What I am trying to say is that I have developed a broadness of mind which my friends in the village cannot think of  having.”

“We got the licence for power loom because the regulation was that you could not make 100 per cent filament synthetics except on licensed power looms Aditya Birla latched on to the same idea.Not only Reliance,Gwalior was a power loom factory. I am telling you, Gwalior’s Dornie looms were also known as power looms What a fallacy! People think composite mills are first class, that power looms are second class. I wanted to remove that feeling.”

“I was constantly thinking of going in manufacturing.My desire was motivated by the fact that we were not able to produce and supply a quality fabric to the export market. It was a question of integrating backwards. If I had a ready product then I would not be at the mercy of other units in the industry, and I could ensure the quality of the products myself.”

“Yes, I believe in God, but I don’t perform a daily puja. I don’t have any gurus. Ek baat hai,destiny, koi cheez had.”

“I am not a believer in religious rituals. I was brought up in the Arya Samaj environment which taught us to shun rituals. Puja, of course, but simple, elegant and brief.”

“Play on the frontiers of technology. Be ahead of the tomorrows.”

“People don’t want the headache of comparing and shopping around. They would rather go straight for quality. Right from the start, I knew that brand image was the most important part in order to win the consumer’s confidence.” (To achieve this objective, )”We tried to emphasize that we were producing a superior fabric by laying stress on the technological sophistication of our unit in all our advertising. Simultaneously we took steps to evolve our own distribution system as we found that the existing marketing channels were inadequate and unsatisfactory. So much of our success in marketing was a function of three factors–choosing the right product
mix, identifying our market and establishing a viable distribution structure.”

“Once I had successfully put up a textile mill I decided I must have a world scale, fully integrated plant. All I wanted was to be competitive with countries like Japan, Taiwan, Korea.”

There is no difference between our methods and those of anybody bu else–the only difference is that our motivation and dedication he is much greater.”

“You accuse me of black marketing, but which of you has not slept with me?”

“My holding is 16 per cent, but I can’t keep control over the company by my shareholding. I keep control over the company by showing performance and winning the confidence of the shareholder. I have never been afraid to expand my capital base because I know that I have the confidence of the shareholders. I don’t mind if my shareholding gets diluted–and it is getting diluted–because as you must be knowing, very few chief executives of a company are loved by their shareholders as I am loved.”

“I was a buyer of this product all over the world and I was observing what was going on–not only with the producers in India but also abroad. I went to a major company in the West and saw how inefficient they were..people were not working were having long lunch hours. The bosses too were not committed .. . and the cost of all these inefficiencies was loaded on to the product and was being passed on to me. I knew that we could manage the business a lot better, make more money than them, and yet supply better and cheaper products to our mills.”

“Now I get my rupee funds from my investors. For my foreign exchange requirements, I can access the international markets. But we are open to consider joint ventures where we have an active role to play.”