Vijay Mallya

Born on 18 December 1955 Vijay Mallya is a well known businessman all over the world today! The son of industrialist Vittal Mallya he is the Chairman of the United Breweries Group and Kingfisher Airlines, which draws its name from United Breweries Group's flagship beer brand, Kingfisher.

Vijay Mallya was born in a Konkani Gaud Saraswat Brahmin family originally from the town of Bantwal in Karnataka. He is the son of Vittal Mallya and Lalitha Ramaiah. He was educated at La Martiniere Boys' College, Kolkata and completed his degree at St. Xavier's College, Calcutta under Calcutta University. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Business Administration by the California Southern University. Across the world, Vijay Mallya currently has 26 belongings. His favorite home is built on an area of 11000 sq. feet in Sausalito, California, USA, other than this he has castle in Scotland, homes in Monaco, Trump Plaza in New York City, the Northern California region of Napa Valley, South Africa and five in Indian cities New Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore.

Mallya has an estimated net worth of $1.0 billion He receives substantial press coverage that focuses on his lavish parties, villas, automobiles, Force India, Royal Challengers Bangalore , and his yacht, the Indian Empress. He also owns the Formula One team Force India, the Indian Premiere League team Royal Challengers Bangalore, and the I-League team East Bengal FC.

In 2005, Mallya established Kingfisher Airlines. At present, the airline connects 32 cities. Kingfisher Airlines obtained a 26% stake in Air Deccan, a low cost Indian airline which Mallya later acquired fully and rebranded as Kingfisher Red. Vijay Mallya and his Jet Airways counterpart Naresh Goyal announced an alliance after a marathon meeting on 13 October 2008 at Mumbai, India.

Other than his business Mr. Vijay Mallya has established Mallya Hospital in Bangalore. The hospital is located in Vittal Mallya Road, named after his father. He also helped to fund the Mallya Aditi International School, a private school in Bangalore. The greatest achievement is that he brought back, Indian’s historical treasure Tipu Sultan’s sword successfully, by bidding for the sword at an auction in London in 2004. He commenced the development of real estate UB city in Bangalore, the project concentrate on corporate offices, retail and service apartments. He was conferred a Doctorate of Philosophy in Business Administration, by the Southern California University, Irvine. He has also been nominated as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum.

Vijay Mallya has other interests too apart from business. He has won trophies in professional car racing circuits and is a keen yachtsman and aviator. He has also won numerous trophies in horse racing including several prestigious Derbies.
A gem of a person, sharp businness man with a keen eye on his goal & a man with true sportsmen spirit - Vijay Mallya.

Ratan Tata

You may wonder why the Tatas — among the country's biggest and most illustrious industrial families for well over a century — never show up on any of those ritual listings of India's richest people. The reason is as simple as it is remarkable. Over generations, the Tatas have sustained a tradition of bequeathing much of their personal wealth to the many trusts they have created for the greater good of India and its people.

Ratan Tata was born on December 28, 1937, in Bombay. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in architecture from Cornell University in 1962. Ratan Tata had a short stint with Jones and Emmons in Los Angeles, California, before returning to India in late 1962. He joined the Tata Group and was assigned to various companies before being appointed director-in-charge of The National Radio & Electronics Company (NELCO) in 1971. Ratan Tata was appointed Chairman of Tata Industries in 1981. He was assigned the task of transforming the company into a Group strategy think-tank, and a promoter of new ventures in high technology businesses.

His words, ‘a promise is a promise is a promise’, went in history as golden words when the Tata Nano debuted at the 9th annual Auto Expo on January 10, 2008. Despite of facing heaps of political as well as social pressure in West Bengal, the Tatas showcased their character and delivered the car at the committed price of 1 lakh.
Ratan Tata has his own capital in Tata Sons, the holding company of the group. His share is around 1%, valuing his personal holding at approximately US$ 1 Billion.

About 66% of the equity capital of Tata Sons is held by philanthropic trusts endowed by members of the Tata family. The biggest two of these trusts are the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, which were created by the families of the sons of Jamshedji Tata. Ratan Tata is on the board of trustees of the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, and is the chairman of the board of trustees of the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, giving him significant influence on the board of Tata Sons, despite his minority personal shareholding.

After the 26 November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Forbes opined Ratan Tata be brought into politics, calling him India’s most respected business leader.

Indra Nooyi

In a sold-out appearance at Asia Society headquarters, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi spoke with Asia Society President Vishakha N. Desai about the challenges and successes she has experienced in her career at the highest levels of international business. "We are in an era of profound change," said Nooyi. "We can no longer be focused on the short term, we must think long term... It's just superhuman what is expected of us. Many of us are learning new skills. 'Rockstar' doesn’t work for any CEO."

Indra Nooyi is a graduate from Madras Christian College (MCC) in Chemistry, Physics and Math. On completion of her graduation she went to Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta for doing Masters in Finance and Marketing. Soon after completion of her MBA she joined ABB and then Johnson and Johnson in Mumbai. One of her achievement with J&J is her close association with launch of “Stayfree”. From there she has been no stopping her life.

Nooyi not only shows tenacity for follow-up, but she equally emphasized in the Mergers and Acquisition. Nooyi joined PepsiCo in 1994 and was named president and CFO in 2001. Nooyi has directed the company's global strategy for more than a decade and led PepsiCo's restructuring, including the 1997 divestiture of its restaurants into Tricon, now known as Yum! Brands. Nooyi also took the lead in the acquisition of Tropicana in 1998 and merger with Quaker Oats Company, which also brought Gatorade to PepsiCo. In 2007 she became the fifth CEO in PepsiCo's 44-year history.
In January 2008, Nooyi was elected Chairwoman of the US-India Business Council (USIBC), a non-profit business advocacy organization representing more than 300 of the world's largest companies doing business in India. Nooyi leads USIBC's Board of Directors, an assembly of more than 60 senior executives representing a cross-section of American industry.

Indra Nooyi has been named 2009 CEO of the Year by Global Supply Chain Leaders Group. She is also the latest entrant, who has been placed 4th in the list of worlds topmost influential women’s by the Forbes Magazine.

Her quick decision making ability and sticking to the work until it’s got accomplished has drawn this comment from the Enrico that “If she gets an idea, she goes after it. There’s no stopping her.” No doubt her firmness and go getting attitude has won her laurels in the company and this helped her to build a strong foundation in the career graph to reach the top echelons in the organization where many people just day dreams to reach.

Rahul Bajaj

“If we had done this 10 years ago, people would have asked what is there in India. But for the last few years, the whole world has been looking at India and investing in India, so there is an Indian story to be told.”

Rahul Bajaj is a prominent Indian businessman. Rahul Bajaj, the grandson of Jaman Lal Bajaj founded the Bajaj Group, one of India’s top business group. Rahul Bajaj is the Chairman of the Bajaj Group, which ranks among the top 10 business houses in India. The Bajaj Group has diversified interests ranging from automobiles, home appliances, lighting, iron and steel, insurance, travel and finance. Rahul Bajaj is one of India's most distinguished business leaders and internationally respected for his business acumen and entrepreneurial spirit.

Rahul Bajaj is an alumnus of Harvard, St. Stephen's and Cathedral. He took over the reins of Bajaj Group in 1965. Under his stewardship, the turnover of the Bajaj Auto the flagship company has risen from Rs.72 million to Rs.46.16 billion. Rahul Bajaj created one of India's best companies in the difficult days of the licence-permit raj. He established factories at Akurdi and Waluj. In 1980s Bajaj Auto was top scooter producer in India and its Chetak brand had a 10-year waiting period. 

The initiation of liberalization in India posed great challenges for Bajaj Auto. Liberalisation brought the threat of cheap imports and FDI from top companies like Honda. Rahul Bajaj became famous as the head of the Bombay Club, which opposed liberalization. The scooter sails plummeted as people were more interested in motorcycles and the rival Hero Honda was a pioneer in it.

The recession and stock market collapse of 2001 hit the company hard and it was predicted that the days of Bajaj Auto were numbered. However, Bajaj Auto re-invented itself, established a world-class factory in Chakan, invested in R&D and came up with Bajaj Pulsar Motorcycle. Bajaj Pulsar is currently a leader in its segment.

 

Recently, Rahul Bajaj was elected to Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra. About 100 Rajya Sabha members have declared their assets worth more than one crore rupees with independent Parliamentarian from Maharashtra Rahul Bajaj being the richest. According to an analysis by an NGO, renowned industrialist Bajaj has declared his movable and immovable assets worth over Rs 300 crore.

Warren Edward Buffett

“Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No.1.”

It is true that Buffet is known as one of the greatest investors. Yet take a closer at youth attributes, instinct and activities. You may agree at the end of this tribute, he is indeed an entrepreneur. Multi-billionaire, Warren Buffet does not hide the fact that his goals are to amass wealth. In fact, it is his mission and his skill is the reason that investors back him and the holding company he manages.

In 2008 Warren Buffett was ranked the richest person in the world. He made his fortune from investing in the stock market and buying out companies.

"Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway."

Even as a child Buffett displayed an interest in making and saving money. He went door to door selling chewing gum, Coca-Cola, or weekly magazines. For a while he worked in his grandfather's grocery store. While still in high school, he carried out several successful money-making ideas: delivering newspapers, selling golfballs and stamps, and detailing cars among them. Filing his first income tax return in 1944, Buffett took a $35 deduction for the use of his bicycle and watch on his paper route.

Buffett's interest in the stock market and investing also dated to his childhood, to the days he spent in the customers' lounge of a regional stock brokerage near the office of his father's own brokerage company. On a trip to New York at the age of ten he made a point to visit the New York Stock Exchange. And about this same time he purchased shares of Cities Service for himself and his sister.

He tried to get a position with Graham’s firm and was at first unsuccessful. He finally got the job and, as he generously acknowledges, learned a lot about stock investment from The Master. Graham eventually retired and Buffett started a limited partnership in Omaha, using capital contributed by family and friends. The partnership was a great success and Buffett is said to have averaged an annual rate of return for the partnership in excess of 23 per cent, far in excess of the market.

Buffett, after several years, decided to wind up the partnership, returning the lucky investors their capital and their share of the profits, and bought an interest in Berkshire Hathaway, a textile company, giving his original investors the chance to invest. The smart ones did so. Buffett’s early days at Berkshire Hathaway were not great. The company was in an industry facing real challenges from exports and high manufacturing costs. Warren Buffett had not, however, forgotten what he had learned under Graham, and arranged for the company to buy out two Nebraska insurance companies. This was the start of Buffett’s interest in insurance and the rise to financial fame of both himself and Berkshire Hathaway.

Naresh Goyal

Naresh Goyal (नरेश गोयल) (born December 23, 1950) is a founder Chairman of Jet Airways. He was born in Patiala in Punjab in the house of a jewellery dealer. When he was 11 his family went through an economic crisis and his house was auctioned. He lived with his mother's uncle.

Naresh Goyal had to walk for a few miles everyday to school as his parents could not afford a bicycle for him, and started his career as a cashier at his maternal uncle's company at a starting salary of Rs 300 a month.  Goyal, however, hasn't forgotten his humble past. A reason why he remains modest and avoids the limelight. For e.g. minutes after announcing his decision to buy Air Sahara for Rs 2,225 crore (Rs 22.25 billion) - a deal, which gives him control over almost half of India's domestic aviation airspace - Goel refuses to give it much importance and said, "It's no big deal. I am neither happy nor excited. Such acquisitions have been the way of life in the west."

Naresh Goyal completed his graduation in Commerce in 1967 and joined the travel business with the GSA for Lebanese International Airlines. From 1967 to 1974 he learnt the intricacies of the travel business through his association with several foreign airlines.

In May 1974, Naresh Goyal founded Jetair (Private) Limited to look after Sales and Marketing operations of foreign airlines in India. Naresh Goyal was involved in developing studies of traffic patterns, route structures, and operational economics and flight scheduling. His rich and varied experience made him an authority in the world of aviation and travel.

In 1991, when the Indian economy was being opened up, Naresh Goyal took advantage of Open Skies Policy of the Government of India and set up Jet Airways for the operation of scheduled air services on domestic sectors in India. Jet Airways started commercial operations on May 05, 1993.

Finally, in 1992, he took the big step of setting up his airline - Jet Airways. A firm believer in numerology, Goyal is fond of number "5". People close to him say his decision to acquire Air Sahara was also taken on the 5th many months ago.

Along with Jet's meteoric rise, Naresh Goyal too rose in the entrepreneurial arena. He has won several honors and accolades. These include Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Services' from Ernst & Young in 2000, 'Distinguished Alumni Award-2000 for meritorious and distinguished performance as an Entrepreneur', Outstanding Asian-Indian' award for leadership and contribution to the global community given by the Indian American Centre for Political Awareness, 'Aerospace Laurels' for outstanding contribution in the field of Commercial Air Transport twice, in April 2000 and February 2004. Naresh Goyal also received the first BM Munjal Award for Excellence in Learning & Development in the Private Sector category in 2006.

 

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Dhirubhai Hirachand Ambani

“Growth has no limit at Reliance. I keep revising my vision.
Only when you can dream it, you can do it.”

The saga of dreams and destiny wherein the possibility and ability to challenge every obstacle was literally larger than life, such is the chronicle of the legend who lives perpetually in our minds and hearts, Dhirubhai Hirachand Ambani.

Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani, one of the leading Indian businessmen, was born on December 28, 1932 in Chorwad, Gujarat. Popularly known as Dhirubhai Ambani, he heads The Reliance Industries, India’s largest private enterprise.

Dhirubhai started off as a small time worker with Arab merchants in the 1950s he was 16 years old and worked with A. Besse & Co. for a salary of Rs.300. Two years later, A. Besse & Co. became the distributors for Shell products, and Dhirubhai was promoted to manage the company’s filling station at the port of Aden. Later he moved to Mumbai in 1958 to start his own business in spices. After making modest profits, he moved into textiles and opened his mill near Ahmedabad. Dhirubhai founded Reliance Industries in 1958. Dhiru Bhai Ambani built India's largest private sector company, Reliance India Limited, from a scratch. Over time his business has diversified into a core specialisation in petrochemicals with additional interests in telecommunications, information technology, energy, power, retail, textiles, infrastructure services, capital markets, and logistics. Reliance later started seizing opportunities thrown up by a combination of the growing Indian economy and the opening up of the regulation-driven sectors of the economy.

The world, they say, steps aside
for the man who knows
where he is going

Dhirubhai Ambani is credited with shaping India's equity culture, attracting millions of retail investors in a market till then dominated by financial institutions. Dhirubhai revolutionised capital markets. From nothing, he generated billions of rupees in wealth for those who put their trust in his companies. His efforts helped create an 'equity cult' in the Indian capital market. With innovative instruments like the convertible debenture, Reliance quickly became a favorite of the stock market in the 1980s.

In 1992, Reliance became the first Indian company to raise money in global markets, its high credit-taking in international markets limited only by India's sovereign rating. Reliance also became the first Indian company to feature in Forbes 500 list.

Dhirubhai Ambani was named the Indian Entrepreneur of the 20th Century by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). A poll conducted by The Times of India in 2000 voted him "greatest creator of wealth in the century".

India a Land of Entrepreneurs

Doesn’t the word “karobar” sound crude & crass? Well quite literally, when translated from Hindi to English, it means the a very commonly used word ‘business’. Dhanda is a word that has been used over thousands of years in India, all through its rich history of enterprises.

Indian entrepreneurs are making waves all across the world. Indian business firms are making acquisitions abroad and spreading their tentacles in various corners of the world. Indian Entrepreneurs have proved all doomsday prophecies wrong and on the contrary have flourished under globalization.

India is known as a ‘Nation of Entrepreneurs’. It may have been hard to tell this in the days before the economic liberalization of the 1990s and the time of the license raj, but entrepreneurs existed even then. They were the vendors you can still find in country buses, peddling little plastic knickknacks and bottles of cure-all powders. And you can find them in rural settings—the craftsmen, the farmer, the traders—all managing their businesses without relying on salaries or handouts.

When we think of Indian entrepreneurs, we often think of the big success stories: Dhirubhai Ambani, the Tatas, steel baron Lakshmi Mittal or, more recently, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy. The smaller entrepreneurs may not be as sophisticated, but the neighborhood kiryana store lala, the beauty parlor owner and the neighborhood tailor have their business principles squarely in place. They could certainly have taught the dot-com boomers (and busters) a thing or two about how to create strong, sustainable businesses.

So how did these entrepreneurs create businesses from the ground up without huge capital? Yes and here are some important things we can learn from them:

First is providing value to customers. Are you offering the benefit of convenience or price? Or is your product unique in some way? And Managing operating costs. Keep them below gross margins.

Second, Taking advantage of one’s strengths—whether it’s location, low-overheads or building lasting relationships with customers.

Third is understanding that your business needn’t be high-tech to succeed. Rather, it needs to meet the needs of the customers in a way that would simplify and improve their lives.

Forth and the most important: Starting small and growing organically, while dreaming big.

You can gradually expand your business. If you are successful, you gradually grow and hire people. Dhirubai Ambani, Karsanbhai Patel and B. M. Munjal all built empires. It look likes this ladder of opportunity has no limit, you can always grow more.

India’s secular growth trajectory is being propelled more by domestic consumption than by anything else. In turn, domestic consumption is increasingly and rapidly being driven by middle India. Thanks to media exposure, telecom penetration, growing linkages with larger urban centers, rising incomes and enhanced distribution and penetration by consumer product companies, aspiration levels of this India are at an all time high. Growth opportunities abound across all sectors of the consumer economy – from personal grooming to retail to financial services to healthcare to consumer goods to education to…….the list is long. Not surprisingly, with the increased opportunities and awareness, interest in entrepreneurship is rising fast and by choice.

As entrepreneurs, when we are frustrated with dealing with the babus, it is worth remembering that the problem is not because ‘Indians are like this only’. It is, in fact, because we are dealing with an antiquated government system that was never designed for our benefit to begin with. We may take comfort in knowing that we will eventually overcome, because we start off with an undeniable advantage: entrepreneurship resides in our cultural code. The good news is that the situation is changing - more start-ups are happening now and the government system is working for a better future.

Rags to Riches

This blog is dedicated to the richest and most powerful men and women in India. Each post every week will follow one person's journey to becoming one of the juggernauts in Indian Economic and Financial History