SELF-MADE BILLIONAIRE: GAUTAM ADANI

From being a University dropout, to having his own University, Gautam Adani is the first billionaire from Ahmedabad, Gujarat. We have heard of success stories of people with the highest degrees, hierarchy of business, monetary power or a healthy circle of friends and family. But if we observe keenly, the supreme success stories are tagged ‘rags to riches’. Similar is the story of Gautam Adani, the 6th richest person in India, with a personal wealth of US $10 billion.

THE WHIZ KID

Gautam Adani was born to a Gujarati Jain family of Shantaben and Shantilal Adani on 24 June 1962, in Ahmedabad. The family had migrated to the city from the smaller place called Tharad in northern Gujarat, in search of means to earn a decent living for their eight children. Needless to say, the monetary situation was very tight. Gautam had a few hundred rupees on hand at the age of 18, when he set out to the land of dreams, Mumbai in search of a living.

Gautam was a student of Seth CN Vidyalaya and later dropped out of the Gujarat University, where he was pursuing second year for his Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce. He started his career as a diamond sorter at Mahindra Brothers in Mumbai. After working for two years, Gautam set up his own diamond brokerage unit at Zaveri Bazaar, the biggest jeweler market of the city. It was here that he earned his first lakh.

THE BIZ KID

In 1981, one year later, his elder brother Mansukhbhai, bought a plastics unit in Ahmedabad and asked Gautam to run it. This marked his advent in the field of global trading as he started importing polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a key raw material for manufacturing plastics.

After the economic liberalization in India, the import duty on various goods was slit. This had a positive impact on the profits of Adani Exports, then the flagship company of Gautam Adani. Today, the Adani Group has transformed into a multibillion-dollar business empire. Under the leadership of Gautam Adani, the Group has emerged as a diversified Energy and Logistics conglomerate with interests in Power Generation & Transmission, Coal Trading & Mining, Gas Distribution, Oil & Gas Exploration, along with Ports, Special Economic Zones et al. The Group also runs the Adani Foundation, started in 1996 as a part of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The foundation is involved in various activities such as rural development, education and health.

Today, the flagship of his Rs 27,000-crore empire, Adani Enterprises Ltd., has been rated among the 50 top performing Asian companies by Forbes magazine. His three listed companies – Adani Enterprises, Adani Power and Mundra Port and Special Economic Zone have a combined market capitalization that places the group among India’s top 10 business houses.
Listed by the Forbes in March 2011, Gautam Adani is also the proud owner of two private jets – a Beech craft jet purchased in 2005 and a Hawker purchased in 2007.

PERSONAL PROXIMITY

Gautam is happily married to Mrs. Priti Adani, a dentist by profession. She heads the Adani Foundation as the managing trustee. The couple has two sons, the elder one, Karan Adani, is 20 years of age and the younger one, Jeet Adani, is 10 years of age. The elder son is presently pursuing his Business Studies in Management at the Purdue University, USA.
Adani Group has been a generous contributor to Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). Also, Gautam has proximity to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. It was speculated that Adani bid for the Ahmedabad franchise of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament at Modi’s urging, though the bid failed.

LESSONS OF SURVIVAL AND SUCCESS

Gautam Adani is an icon of unwavering focus and continuous learning. He has set up milestones in his journey towards a strong and energy-sufficient India. Gautam has proved that the best learning comes from the most unconventional real-life situations, where everyone has to learn to first survive before achieving success.

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THE SPIRIT OF ENTERPRISE:DR. KARSANBHAI PATEL

Karsanbhai Patel – the man who shattered all the business theories, to rewrite new ones. He is the legendary behind the hugely successful brand, Nirma. He is the driving force behind a large number of companies and institutions in India under this banner.

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE

Dr. Karsanbhai Khodidas Patel was born in 1945, into a farmer family from Ruppur, Mehsana, North Gujarat. At the age of 21, he completed his B.Sc in Chemistry. Karsanbhai started his career with the New Cotton Mills of the Lalbhai Group, in Ahmedabad, as a lab technician. He later joined the Geology and Mining Department of the State Government.

SABKI PASAND NIRMA

Karsanbhai started Nirma as an after-office business in the backyard of his house in 1969. The name came from his daughter Nirupama’s name. Nirma was a benchmark.

• The detergent was phosphate free.

• The packs were handmade.

• They were delivered at the doorstep by Karsanbhai, on his bicycle while going to his work place, which was 17 km from his home.

• They were sold for Rs. 3 per kg, which was one-third of the then least priced popular detergents.

• Even at this price, he managed to give a money back guarantee with every pack that was sold!

• The detergent was environment friendly too.

• The process of detergent production was labor intensive and this gave employment to a large number of people.

Also, the story of Nirma has become a classic marketing case study. Karsanbhai identified a massive market segment that was starving for a good-quality detergent at an affordable price. Nirma became a huge success. During that time, the domestic detergent market was limited only to the premium segment and there were very few companies, mainly the MNCs, which were into this business. And so, Karsanbhai could successfully target the lower and middle income groups.

THE JOURNEY CONTINUES

It was after three long years that Karsanbhai felt confident enough to quit his job for the further development of Nirma. He set up a shop at a small workshop in an Ahmedabad suburb. Later he said: “The lack of any such precedent in my family made the venture fraught with fear of failure. But farmers from North Gujarat are known for their spirit of enterprise.”
And within a decade, Nirma was the largest selling detergent in India. It gave the bigger established brands like Unilever and Procter & Gamble, a run for their money and soon occupied the top market share. In the 1980s, Nirma moved ahead of Surf, a detergent by HLL, a giant in the field.

After establishing its footprints in the economy-priced detergents, Nirma entered the premium segment, launching toilet soaps: Nirma bath & beauty soaps and a premium detergent, Super Nirma. The company also ventured into shampoo and toothpaste, but were not as successful. On the other hand, the edible salt Shudh is doing well.

Nirma beauty soap is one of the leading toilet soaps, behind Lifebuoy and Lux. Overall Nirma has a 20% market share in soap cakes and about 35% in detergents. The company got listed on the stock exchanges in the year 1994.

Today, Nirma has entered the neighboring countries’ markets as well. In the national market, Nirma’s soaps and detergents sell through two million retail outlets. In 2004, it expanded into pharma by acquiring an IV fluid factory in Ahmedabad. The company also acquired US based Searles Valley Minerals to become one of the top producers of soda ash in the world.
Karsanbhai’s two sons and his son-in-law are now at leading positions in the Nirma organization.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Along with being a noted businessman, Karsanbhai is a philanthropist as well. He has established one of the premier institutions of higher learning in Gujarat, the Nirma University of Science & Technology in 2003. Apart from this, Nirma Education & Research Foundation (NERF) that came up in 1994, runs these various educational institutes. Nirma has also set up Nirma labs in 2004, which prepares aspiring entrepreneurs to face different business challenges effectively. Nirma also runs Nirma Memorial Trust, Nirma Foundation and Chanasma Ruppur Gram Vikas Trust as a part of their efforts of a socially responsible corporate citizen.

ACCOLADES

On this path to success, Karsanbhai has won himself many accolades, along with people’s acceptance and love.

• Padma Shri Award for the year 2010.
• In 2001, Karsanbhai was awarded an honorary doctorate by Florida Atlantic University.
• In 1990, the Federation of Association of Small Scale Industries of India (FASII), New Delhi, awarded him the ‘Udyog Ratna’.
• The Gujarat Chamber of Commerce has felicitated him as an ‘Outstanding Industrialist of the Eighties’.
• He has served twice as Chairman of the Development Council for Oils, Soaps and Detergents.

The company that started as a one-man-army, today employs more than 15000 people, has a turnover of more than $ 500 million, sales as high as 800000 tonnes and the man’s net worth as per Forbes in 2005 was $ 640 million.

Challenging established multinationals needs extreme courage and to win in the long run needs foresight and skills. Karsanbhai has fulfilled this challenge and he made the multinationals to follow Nirma and introduce substitutes such as Wheel. He is a man to be followed. He teaches us a lesson that entrepreneurs can build their empire on gut feeling too, rather than just following the classical patterns taught in business schools.

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THE WATERMARK OF GUJARATI ART: GLASS PAINTINGS

Now this is something most of us are not aware of. Glass painting in India originated in Gujarat in the eighteenth century, which was home to many glass painting artists from China. From Gujarat, the art form has spread to many corners of India.
Apart from its birthplace, what is it that makes glass painting so unique?

PAINT PERFECT

The glass paintings are noted for their thematic variety, sheer brilliance, stunning clarity and use of rich colors. They comprise of engraving laid down on the back of the glass and are painted from the reverse. The process requires immense skill and, as a genre, glass painting is extremely difficult for the sequence of steps followed when painting on an opaque surface, is reversed in painting glass.

The medium of glass provides the painter with something that no other mediums can – the light effect. This makes the paintings look truly delicate and beautiful.
Glass painting necessitates some proper methods that are followed by the artists. The artist first begins the picture and fills the outlines and finer details with the brush. After the completion of the painting, these lines appear on the top layer. To give a glittering look, the unpainted areas of the painting are pasted with gold or silver foil. Then the larger areas are filled in with opaque paints. These areas are generally given a flat finish and in some paintings shading techniques are used.

THEMES

The glass painting developed as the local painters incorporated their painting ideas and put them on glass by depicting popular stories, epic themes, portraits and icons on the glass paintings. This form of art became popular with the masses, as it was quite inexpensive. The artists used to make pictures of the rulers and aristocrats including their mistresses and dancing girls. The artisans of each region had a distinct technique and creativity that differ from one another, so is the case with Gujarat.

Be it any form of art, the religious themes always dominate in

Gujarat. Apart from them, incidents of daily life, court scenes, floral designs and portraits are common when it comes to glass paintings. Also, some of the glass paintings are embellished with gold leaf with the rich usage of bold and vibrant colors and semi precious stones that convey the creative magnificence of the skillful artisans. Sometimes the painting of a deity is surrounded within frames. The glass paintings of Gujarat stand out for their popular folk art traditions that are displayed in the art.

The painters also use dots, lines and patterns that are the empty space fillers in the picture and enhance the aesthetic appeal of the paintings.

ART, BUSINESS, PASSION IN INDIA

Glass painting is a booming industry, with its exports reaching out to almost all continents. The glass painting exporters’ community is growing by the day, which is a tribute to the mushrooming Indian talent in glass painting. By depicting eye-catching patterns and designs, they have reached out to a lot of buyers, who patronize Indian glass paintings, both in India and abroad. With a diverse segregation of painting cultures and the ultimate art, it is a small wonder that Indian glass paintings are among the most sought after in the world.

Apart from it being a business, the youth see it as a line of study. Several courses for glass paintings are offered and special degrees are given by Fine Arts colleges.

But what sets Gujarat apart is, the artists here pursue glass paintings not just as an art or business, but as a passion. The language of the artistic glass paintings is expressive, lively and intelligible. The glass paintings deserve to be placed as the antique articles for the lucid designs and immense craftsmanship.

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FROM SOAPS TO SOFTWARE: WIPRO

At the first annual general meeting of the company attended by Azim Premji, a shareholder doubted Premji’s ability to handle business at such a young age and publicly advised him to sell his shareholding and give it to a more mature management. This spurred Azim Premji and made him all the more determined to make Wipro a success story. And the rest is history.

Azim Hashim Premji, born on July 24, 1945, is a man of power and strength. He is a business tycoon, philanthropist and the chairman of Wipro Limited, a group company that holds Wipro Technologies, India’s third largest software development company. He is an icon among Indian businessmen and his success story is a source of inspiration to a number of budding entrepreneurs.
Premji was born to a Gujarati Khoja, Shia Islamic family at Karachi, present day Pakistan. His father MH Premji owned the Western India Products (which later became Wipro Ltd.) that made hydrogenated vegetable oils and fats. His grandfather was the rice king of Burma. While Premji completed his initial education at St. Mary’s School, Mumbai, he was forced to leave his studies in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, California, USA at the age of 21 to take over the family business when his father suddenly died in 1966. He, however, after a gap of 30 years, completed the engineering degree in 1999. Premji is married to Yasmeen; the couple has two children, Rishad and Tariq. Rishad is currently the Chief Strategy Officer of IT Business, Wipro Technologies while Tariq,has co-founded a dotcom and works from Bangalore. However, Premji who holds 78% stakes in Wipro does not believe in naming one of his sons as his successor just for the norms.Wipro grew from a company of US $2.5 million to a giant of $1.4 billion under Azim Premji’s leadership. When he took the lead, the company dealt in hydrogenated cooking fats and later diversified to bakery fats, ethnic ingredient based toiletries, hair care soaps, baby toiletries, lighting products, and hydraulic cylinders. Thereafter Premji made a focused shift from soaps to software. Wipro was the pioneer in providing integrated business, technology and process solutions on a global delivery platform. Today, Wipro Technologies is the largest independent R&D service provider in the world. It entered the IT field, taking advantage of the expulsion of IBM from the Indian market in 1975. Wipro Technologies is ranked among the top 100 technology companies globally. It works with leading global companies, such as Alcatel, Nokia, Cisco, Ericsson and Nortel and has a joint venture in Medical Systems with General Electric Company.
Despite all the success, the media-shy Premji maintained a low profile, letting his work do all the talking; until when the media broke the story that Azim Premji had become the second-richest man in the world. In spite of his billions, he still travels economy class, stays in budget hotels and drives a Toyota Corolla! In 2000, Asiaweek magazine voted Premji among the 20 most powerful men in the world. He was among the 50 richest people in the world from 2001 to 2003 listed by Forbes. In April 2004, Times Magazine rated him among the 100 most influential people in the world. He is also the richest Indian for the past several years. In 2005, Government of India honored Azim Premji with Padma Bhushan. As on March 9, 2010, he was one of the wealthiest people in India, with a net worth of $17 billion. The Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee and the Manipal Academy of Higher Education have both conferred honorary doctorates on him. He is also a member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee for Information Technology in India.

In 2001, Premji established the Azim Premji Foundation, a not-for-profit organization with a Vision of significantly contributing to quality universal education to build a just, equitable and humane society. This means every child should receive quality education. The foundation works closely with the State Governments of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh etc and the programs cover over 5000 rural schools. The financial resources to this foundation have been personally contributed by Premji. In December 2010, he pledged to donate $2 billion for improving school education in India. This would be done by transferring 213 million equity shares of Wipro Ltd, held by a few entities controlled by him, to the Azim Premji Trust. This donation is the first of its kind by any Indian billionaire.

Premji’s story of success and prominence clearly shows how determination and perseverance, when coupled with knowledge, clear vision and proper planning, enable one to reach the peak of success and leadership. To end with Azim Premji’s strong belief: “Ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things, have the courage to think big.”

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I Am Deaf To The Word ‘No’

The benchmark that almost every aspiring small-time Indian businessman aims at is none other than the rags-to-riches tycoon Dhirubhai Ambani. Dhirubhai Ambani alias Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani was born on December 28, 1932, at Chorwad, Gujarat, into a Modh family. He started his entrepreneurial career by selling ‘Bhajias’ to the visitors at the Mount Girnar on weekends to make extra money and give it to his mother.

Dhirubhai moved to Aden, Yemen at the age of 16 after he completed his matriculation. He started work as a petrol station attendant before taking up a clerical position for an oil company that was the sole distributor of Shell products there. He sought his fortune through such humble beginnings and rose to find India’s largest empire.

Dhirubhai was married to Kokilaben and had two sons, Anil & Mukesh and two daughters, Nina & Deepti. He returned to India in 1958 with Rs 50,000 and set up a textile trading company. Assisted by his sons, he rewrote India’s corporate history. The trading house Reliance Commercial Corporation was set up in a small room with one table and three chairs. It began by importing polyester yarn and exporting spices. Dhirubhai sensed an opportunity in textiles and set up his first unit in 1966 at Naroda near Ahmedabad. The textile brand that he established, Vimal, flourished and remains a household name in India today.

Over the time the business diversified into the core specialization of petrochemicals with additional interests in telecommunications, information technology, energy, power, retail, textiles, infrastructure services, capital markets, and logistics. Since then there was no looking back and Dhirubhai received several honors like Man of the Century, One of the Most Powerful people in Asia, first Indian to be listed by Forbes as the 138th Richest Person of the said year and many more. Dhirubhai was also praised for his key role in shaping India’s stock market culture by attracting hordes of retail investors to a market till then dominated by state-run financial institutions. 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.

Success on such a gigantic scale inevitably excites jealousy and enmity. Dhirubhai was accused of acting unethically and of having manipulated the Government policies to suit his own business needs. But even those who question his business dealings, readily concede that Dhirubhai had a vision and unparalleled business acumen. The film ‘Guru’ by ace director Mani Ratnam is said to be inspired by the life and deeds of Dhirubhai Ambani.

Dhirubhai died on 6th July, 2002. Reliance after Dhirubhai saw many ups and downs. The two brothers, Anil and Mukesh Ambani claimed to have disputes and the Reliance Empire was split into two: Reliance Industries Ltd. (Mukesh Ambani) and Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (Anil Ambani).

Dhirubhai always followed these words: “Think big, think fast and think ahead. Ideas are no one’s monopoly. Our dreams have to be bigger. Our ambitions higher. Our commitment deeper. And our efforts greater. This is my dream for Reliance and for India.”

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