LEADING ENTREPRENEUR OF INDIA

Dhirajlal Ambani, one of India's most successful entrepreneurs, who built up the Reliance Group into the country's largest industrial concern, died on Saturday in Bombay. He was 69.
The cause was a stroke, according to the company.
Mr. Ambani presided over a $12.5 billion empire made up of petrochemical plants, oil refineries and textile and telecommunications interests, which over three decades outgrew much older industrial dynasties like the Tatas and the Birlas.
Most of this growth, moreover, was achieved during the years of the ''license raj,'' when officials determined the products, prices and markets for private enterprises. Mr. Ambani's success reflected the consummate skill with which he used his friendship with prominent politicians and bureaucrats to pick his way through the dense jungle of controls and outwit his rivals.
Mr. Ambani was thus credited with breaking down the monopolies held by India's traditional business families. He was ranked by Forbes this year as the world's 138th-richest person, with an estimated net worth of $2.9 billion.
Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani was born on Dec. 28, 1932, the son of a small trader in a remote village in rural Gujarat. As a teenager, he moved to Aden to seek his fortune, working as a filling station attendant and a clerk with an oil company.
Early evidence of his money-making abilities emerged when he spotted a discrepancy between the value of the silver in Aden's coinage and its official exchange rate against the British pound.
By melting down local coins and selling their silver to London bullion dealers, he was able to amass a few thousand dollars. With that stake, he went to Bombay in 1958 and established the Reliance Trading Corporation, which imported polyester and exported spices.
At a time of rising living standards in India, Mr. Ambani decided to move more heavily into the clothing business. He established his first textile mill, turning out polyester cloth, at Naroda, near Ahmedabad, in 1966. The Vimal textile brand he established remains a household name in India today.
In the 1980's, Mr. Ambani strengthened his position in the textile industry by setting up a plant to make polyester yarn. In the 1990's he turned aggressively toward petrochemicals, oil refining and telecommunications.
To finance his group's growth, Mr. Ambani avoided banks. Instead, he turned to Bombay's undeveloped private capital markets and had considerable success. Reliance's first public share offering in 1977 was snapped up by 58,000 investors, and the Reliance Group has more than five million Indian shareholders today.
Mr. Ambani viewed the current Indian government's plans to sell more state-owned corporations as an opportunity for further growth, and Reliance successfully bid for the giant Indian Petrochemicals two months ago.
Mr. Ambani is survived by his wife, Kokilaben; two sons, Mukesh and Anil, who have been in day-to-day control of the empire since their father suffered a first stroke in 1986; and two daughters.

$Boopathi$, October 4, 2008