Mukesh Ambani | wealthymatters

Jai Hind Estate to Antilla

February 7, 2011 14 Comments

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.We start the journey feeling fresh and full of good cheer,it’s just that after a few miles we start feeling tired and later doubts besiege us.We wonder if it’s possible for ordinary people to be successful at such undertakings.Such is the case with people who start on their journey to make a fortune.Often the first step is migrating to a place of greater opportunity.Such was the case with the Ambanis too.First,there was the migration to Yemen and then to Bombay.They moved from small town Gujarat.Life as a migrant is never easy.On the left is a picture of Jai Hind Estate in Bhuleshwar where the Ambanis first stayed in Mumbai.

Mumbai is a city of migrants.It is also a city of slums,shanties,chawls and tiny Room-Kitchen appartments.Mumbai is also a city of vast opportunity and enterprise.

I just put up the picture above to show that if it’s possible for one family to move from such a place to one on the right in i.e Antilla on Altmount Road there is a chance for everybody else.Being a migrant , lacking fluent English speaking skills , a posh accent or the right pedigree are not lasting barriers to advancement …… atleast in this my beloved city.

Filed under Tidbits Tagged with Antilla Altmount Road, Jai Hind Estate Bhuleshwar, Migrant Migration, Mukesh Ambani, Mumbai Bombay

The NY Times on Mukesh Ambani

February 6, 2011 6 Comments

The article below is from the NY Times.It is very obviously a foreigner’s view of exotic India.But there is some interesting stuff here from which we can draw our own conclusions and perhaps use as we see fit.Read it.Have fun.And do use it.

Indian to the Core, and an Oligarch

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, with his daughter, Isha, at a cricket match of the Mumbai Indians, which he owns. His company, Reliance Industries, is shaping many facets of his nation’s life.

AT a recent cricket match here, Mukesh D. Ambani sat in his private box quietly watching the team he owns, the Mumbai Indians. He seemed oblivious to the others around him: his son cheering wildly, his wife draped in diamond jewelry and a smattering of guests anxiously awaiting the briefest opportunity to speak with him.

A minor bureaucrat stood a few rows back, strategizing with aides about how to buttonhole “the Chairman,” as Mr. Ambani is sometimes called. Waiters in baggy tuxedoes took turns trying to offer him a snack, but as they drew near became too nervous to speak.

In the last century, Mohandas K. Gandhi was India’s most famous and powerful private citizen. Today, Mr. Ambani is widely regarded as playing that role, though in a very different way. Like Mr. Gandhi, Mr. Ambani belongs to a merchant caste known as the modh banias, is a vegetarian and a teetotaler and is a revolutionary thinker with bold ideas for what India ought to become.

Yet Mr. Gandhi was a scrawny ascetic, a champion of the village, a skeptic of modernity and a man focused on spiritual purity. Mr. Ambani is a fleshy oligarch, a champion of the city, a burier of the past and a man who deftly — and, some critics say, ruthlessly — wields financial power. He is the richest person in India, with a fortune estimated in the tens of billions of dollars, and many people here expect that he will be the richest person on earth before long. Read more of this post

Filed under Tidbits Tagged with Mukesh Ambani, Reliance

Dhirubhai Ambani

February 5, 2011 5 Comments

There is no official biography of Dhirubhai Ambani.In its absence a book like ‘ The Polyester Prince ” has to suffice.That Hamish McDonald was not close to Dhirubhai Ambani is a fact.That is why I kept this article – for the contrast.Here Mukesh Ambani speaks about his father to Pritish Nandy.Enjoy this read!

What were your father’s childhood years like? Does he ever speak to you about them?

Very frequently, in fact. Stories about his childhood have always inspired us, taught us how to cope with life’s vicissitudes.

Papa was always very responsible and enterprising. When he was in school, he went to the foot of Mount Girnar — the famous mountain in Saurashtra, where he grew up in a small town called Chorwad in Junagadh — and opened his own shop. To sell bhajias to pilgrims over the weekend. This is how he earned his own money though his needs were few. Until he left for Aden, he wore only half pants!

Why did he go to Aden? Yemen is not exactly an El Dorado.

He was fond of adventure. I guess Aden provided him an opportunity to experience it. To escape his own background, to see the world. He actually went with a recommendation for a job, like people go to Dubai these days. He had just completed school. SSC at that time. Even that on his second attempt! It was like MABF. Matric Appeared But Failed.

Luckily for him, he had admirers at that young age. One of them liked his spirit of enterprise so much that he sent him off to Aden for a job with an Indian trading company. A pedhi. A pedhi was like a proprietary firm. He started there and then moved on to a job with Shell.

What kind of job?

It began at the petrol pump. Then he went on to logistics. Loading all the ships and airplanes, making sure that the entire fuel logistics for Shell worked in perfect synchronicity. Read more of this post

Filed under Tidbits Tagged with Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh Ambani, Oil and Gas, Petrochemicals, Plastics, Polyester, Pritish Nandy, Refinery, Reliance, Telcom

Mukesh Ambani – In His Own Words

February 4, 2011 6 Comments

Normally here are only 3 types of articles on the Ambanis: Awestruck journalists gushing about the Ambani fortune, trenchant criticism from people who seem to have the belief that all money is evil and that great wealth is singularly evil and society mags featuring the newest Ambani Toys and other tittle-tattle.Just because this article is so very different from the normal ones I have kept it so far.Thought I would share it here even though it dates from 2007. The highlighted bits are stuff I found interesting.I got a couple of good money making ideas out of reading this piece.I hope you do too.

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But very little is publicly known of his beliefs, vision and motivation. In his most expansive interview ever to MoneyLIFE, a personal finance magazine, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani tells
MoneyLIFE editors Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu, what drives him and his business decisions

A lot of details about your life are already known. But we don’t know things from your end. Your life has changed dramatically in just about three decades; will you take us through that process?

From my point of view, very little has changed (Laughs). In terms of attitude to life, little has changed. There are important lessons I have learnt during my upbringing. It is important to share these, though these are tough to practise as a parent (smiles).

We were like a joint family and I was the first child of the family of that generation. There were advantages in being the first child those days. My father navigated through life from Aden in Yemen to Bhuleshwar (a congested commercial precinct in Mumbai , to Usha Kiran (Mumbai’s earliest skyscraper) at Altamount Road to Sea Wind (an exclusive tower which is the Ambani residence).

My first memories are of the early ’60s at Altamount Road which was then an emerging area. We were a close-knit family and the four of us — Dipti, Nina, Anil and I — were left to do what we wanted. There were boundaries, of course, but within those, we were not micro-managed. Things have changed so much now. When my kids, Isha and Akash, were in the third standard, we behaved as though it was our exam.

Our own childhood was totally different. I guess when you are left on your own, you find your true potential. I remember my father never came to our school even once. Nevertheless, he was hugely interested in our all-round development for which he did some amazing things. Read more of this post