The Big Winner

June 15th, 2008 by admin

The New York Times/IHT has a fantastic article about Mukesh Ambani, the billionaire industrialist:
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=13711456

Drawing important lessons from the business press sometimes feels like trying to get in-depth knowledge of running a company by watching The Apprentice. But I can’t help it. The article is one of the most inspiring pieces I’ve ever read. Ambani thinks big, with goals much larger than I’d even expect a billionaire to have.

“Can we really banish abject poverty in this country?” he mused aloud in a rare interview at his headquarters here. “Yes, in 10, 15 years we can say we would have done that substantially. Can we make sure that we create a social structure where we remove untouchability? We’re fast moving to a new India where you don’t think about this caste and that caste.”

Ambani made his wealth in emerging markets, where fortunes explode into existence seemingly overnight (even though plenty of long workweeks and other strategic maneuvering occur behind the scenes). Hundreds of millions of people rose up from poverty in the last ten years alone, so maybe it can happen again over the next decade.

As millions of Indians graduate from burning cow dung for energy to guzzling oil, Reliance is plowing billions of dollars into energy exploration and is building the world’s largest oil refinery. It has also opened a chain of nearly 700 stores selling food and various wares; Ambani promises that it will funnel money from the flourishing cities into the struggling agricultural heartland. He envisions Reliance, with $39 billion in revenue, as providing incomes to 12 million to 30 million Indians within the next five years by buying from farmers and employing new workers in its stores.

And the title of the post? It comes from this passage:

“Remember: these guys all grew up in the License Raj,” said a close friend of the tycoon, referring to India’s decades-long experiment with rigid state control over the economy. “They grew up as lotuses from the filth. It makes them tough, it makes them suspicious, it makes them vindictive at times, and it makes them come out in a hurry. They always see life as, ‘Oh God, better not miss an opportunity.”‘

Ambani is one of the most quotable billionaires I’ve ever read about. As with most advice, some of it may seem cliched though it’s often important to have these concepts repeated again and again. Yes, success does include an element of luck. But maybe the old standards (work hard, persist, etc.) can help. Here’s a selection of his wisdom:

* “You need some amount of escapism in life.”

* “My view was: ‘What the hell, man! We can do what we feel like.’ I think what has changed now, and it is changing in multiple generations, is this self-confidence and self-belief.”

* “All of us, in a sense, struggle continuously all the time, because we never get what we want. The important thing which I’ve really learned is how do you not give up, because you never succeed in the first attempt.”

* “How do you really bring about, in a country of a billion people, the individuality of every single individual? How do you make sure that you create systems that empower everybody and bring them to their true potential? This is what actually Gandhi taught us.”