7/28/2019 Life of a Risk Taker

1/2

LIFE OF A RISK TAKER

The term entrepreneur is a loanword from French, and is commonly used to describe an individual who

organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on financial risk to do so. India is the nation of

entrepreneurs and this nation has managed to develop several entrepreneurs and the biggest example is

DHIRAJLAL HIRACHAND AMBANI commonly known as DHIRU BHAI AMBANI.

DHIRU BHAI AMBANI was one of the foremost Indian entrepreneur and businessman who founded

INDIAs largest private sector company, RELIANCE INDIA LIMITED. He was born into MODH family on

28th

December 1932 in Chorwad, Junagadh, Gujrat. His father was a school teacher. DHIRU BHAI

AMBANI was precocious and highly intell igent. He was also highly impatient of the oppressive grinding

mill of the school classroom. When he was 17 years old, he moved to Aden (now part of Yemen). Initially,

DHIRU BHAI AMBANI worked as the dispatch clerk with A.Besse & co. After becoming the distributor of

the shell products, company promoted him to manage the companys oil filing station at the port of Aden.

In 1958, he returned to Mumbai and started his first company, RELIANCE COMMERCIAL

CORPORATION, a commodity trading and export house with an initial capital of Rs.15000. The primary

business was to import polyester yarn and export spices Dhirubhai set up the business in partnership with

Champaklal Damani from whom he parted ways in 1965. Dhirubhai was a known risk taker and he

considered that building inventories, anticipating a price rise, and making profits through that was good

for growth. Dhirubhai started his first textile mill at Naroda, near Ahmedabad in 1966 and started the

brand VIMAL. Textiles were manufactured using polyester fiber yarn. Dhirubhai started named the

brand after his elder brother Ramaniklal Ambanis son, Vimal Ambani. Extensive marketing of the brand

Vimal made it a household name in the interiors of India.

In 1975, a technical team from World Bank certified that the Reliance textile plant was excellent by

developed country standards. In the year 1977, the company went public. With the passage of time,

Dhirubhai diversified into petrochemicals and sectors like telecommunication, information technology,

energy, power, retails, textiles, infrastructure service, capital market and logistics.

The Federation of Indian chamber of commerce and industry (FICCI) named him the INDIAN

ENTREPRENURE of the 20thcentury. A poll conducted by the Times of India in 2000 voted him greatest

creator of wealth in the century. The chemical industry in India Chemtech Foundation and chemical

engineering world in 2000 conferred him the Man of the Century award.

Assisted by his two sons, Mukesh and Anil, Dhirubhai built Indias largest private sector company,

Reliance India Limited. Over time, Dhirubhai diversified into petrochemicals and sectors like

telecommunication, information technology, energy, power, retails, textiles, infrastructure service, capital

market and logistics The BBC described the company as a whole as a business empire with an

estimated annual turnover of dollar 12 billion and an 85000 strong workforce. Today the Reliance Group

has one of the largest family of shareholders in the world. An investment of over 36000 crore (US dollar 9

billion) in petroleum refining, petrochemicals, power generation, telecommunication services and post

terminal in a three year time frame, has steered the Reliance Group to its current status as Indias leading

textiles-petroleum-petrochemicals-power-telecom player.

Dhirubhai breathed his last on 6th

july 2002. He suffered a major brain stroke. On the demise of Dhirubhai

Ambani the Mumbai textile merchants decided to keep the market closed on the july 8, 2002, as a mark of

respect to this great businessman. ATAL BIHARI VAJPAYEE, former Prime minister of India said of

7/28/2019 Life of a Risk Taker

2/2

Dhirubhai The country has lost iconic proof of what an ordinary Indian fired by the spirit of enterprise and

driven by determination can achive in his own lifetime. Thus he will always be remembered as the one

who rewrote Indian Corporate History and built a truly global corporate group.