TOP 5 ENTREPRENEURS OF ALL TIME

“If you don't build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs”

DHIRUBHAI AMBANI

Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani (Dhirubhai Ambani ) was born on 28 December 1932, at Chorwad, Junagadh (now the state of Gujarat, India) to Hirachand Gordhanbhai Ambani and Jamnaben in a Modh family of very moderate means. Dhirubhai Ambani is said to have started his entrepreneurial career by selling "pakora" to pilgrims in Mount Girnar over the weekends. When he was 16 years old, he moved to Aden, Yemen. He 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.

He was married to Kokilaben and had two sons, Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani and two daughters, Nina Kothari and Deepti Salgaocar.
In 1962, Dhirubhai returned to India and started the Reliance Commercial Corporation with a capital of Rs.15,000.00. The primary business of Reliance Commercial Corporation was to import polyester yarn and export spices.The first office of the Reliance Commercial Corporation was set up at the Narsinathan Street in Masjid Bunder. It was a 350 Sq. Ft. room with a telephone, one table and three chairs. Initially, they had two assistants to help them with their business. In 1965, Champaklal Damani and Dhirubhai Ambani ended their partnership and Dhirubhai started on his own. It is believed that both had different temperaments and a different take on how to conduct business. While Mr. Damani was a cautious trader and did not believe in building yarn inventories, 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.

During this period, Dhirubhai and his family used to stay in one bedroom apartment at the Jaihind Estate in Bhuleshwar, Mumbai. In 1968, he moved to an upmarket apartment at Altamount Road in South Mumbai. Ambani's net worth was estimated at about Rs.1 million by late 1960s.

Ambani's great achievement was that he showed Indians what was possible. With no Oxford or Yale degree and no family capital, he achieved what the Elite "brown sahibs" of New Delhi could not: he built an ultramodern, profitable, global enterprise in India itself. What's more, he enlisted four million Indians, a generation weaned on nanny-state socialism, in an adventure in can-do capitalism, convincing them to load up on Reliance stock.

Still, Ambani seems destined to be remembered as a folk hero—an example of what a man from one of India's poor villages can accomplish with non-shrink ambition.

Ratan N Tata

Ratan N Tata was the Chairman of Tata Sons, one of the two promoter holding companies of the Tata group, from 1991 till his retirement on December 28, 2012. He was also chairman of the major Tata companies, including Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Power, Tata Global Beverages, Tata Chemicals, Indian Hotels and Tata Teleservices. During his tenure, the group’s revenues grew manifold, totalling over $100 billion in 2011-12.

Mr Tata is also associated with various organisations in India and overseas. He is the chairman of two of the largest private-sector-promoted philanthropic trusts in India. He is a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry. He is the president of the Court of the Indian Institute of Science and chairman of the Council of Management of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He also serves on the board of trustees of Cornell University and the University of Southern California. Mr Tata serves on the board of directors of Alcoa, and is also on the international advisory boards of Mitsubishi Corporation, JP Morgan Chase, Rolls-Royce, Temasek Holdings and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

The Government of India honoured Mr Tata with its second-highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2008. He has also received honorary doctorates from several universities in India and overseas.

AZIM PREMJI

Azim Premji, a graduate in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, USA has been at the helm of Wipro Limited since the late 1960’s, turning what was then a $2 million hydrogenated cooking fat company into close to $ 8 billion Revenue IT, BPO and R&D Services organization with a presence in 58 countries, that it is today. The overall Wipro group revenues are $ 9 billion.

        

      Premji has been driven by one basic idea – to build an organization deeply committed to Values, with the firm belief that success in business eventually but inevitably follows. Unflinching commitment to Values continues to remain at the core of Wipro. Premji strongly believes that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things when organized into highly charged teams, and takes keen personal interest in developing leaders and teams.Wipro’s business success has been driven by keeping the customer at the core of everything it does. Combining its deep expertise in technology with an equally clear understanding of customer industries, Wipro attempts to deliver business value to customers consistently. The consistency is driven by its pioneering efforts in service quality and predictability, through methodologies like Six Sigma, PCMM and Lean. The underlying tenets that drive this overall culture are that of speed, simplicity and excellence.

        

   In 2001, Premji established and personally endowed the Azim Premji Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, with a vision of enhancing quality and equity in the public school education system in India, to build a better society. The Azim Premji Foundation works in 7 states of India which have over 300,000 schools. In 2011, the Foundation established the Azim Premji University, which is focused on teaching and research programs in Education and other areas of Human Development.

                     

  MUKESH AMBANI

        Mukesh Ambani was born on 19 April, 1957 in Aden, Yemen to Dhirubhai Ambani and his wife Kokilaben Ambani.  Now, he is the richest person in India.  Mukesh attended the Hill Grange High School at Peddar Road in Mumbai.  After completing his high school in Mumbai, he got a BE Degree in Chemical Engineering from Institute of Chemical Technology at Matunga. He also started his MBA at Stanford University but he had to discontinue his studies to assist his father in the family startup company, Reliance, which was growing fast at that time.

          After joining business, Mukesh Ambani played pivotal role in growing the business legacy and diversified into new sectors. Under his leadership, Reliance industries made a foray into sectors like petroleum refining, petrochemicals and gas exploration.  He also setup Reliance infocomm Limited (Presently Reliance Communications Limited).

          In his successful enviable business career, Mukesh Ambani has gone through some turbulent times too. His rift with sibling Anil Ambani, another business tycoon and chairman of ADA Group, hogged media attention post the demise of their father. In recent times, the NDA Government stammed a $ 579 million fine on RIL for gas production shortfall.

         

Sunil Mittal

Sunil Mittal was born on 23 oct 1957 in Punjab agraval family. He is an entrepreneur, philanthropist and the founder, chairman and group CEO of bharathi enterprises, which ha interst in telecom, retail financial service and agri business . the group flagship bharathi airtel , with operation in 20 countries across Asia and Africa and a customs base of over 275 million , is India’s largest telecom co and worlds 3^rd mobile operator . Bharathi airtel clocked revenues of over USD 14.5 billion in FY 2013. He is listed as the 8^th richest person in India by Forbes with net worth of $7 billion.

In 2007 he was awarded padma bhushan, India’s 3^rd cilivilian honour on 1 July 2013. He was elected wise chairman of ICC .

Sunil mittal’s father, sat Paul mittal, had been the member of parliament, Rajya Sabha (INC) from Punjab. he 1^st joined the wynberg allen school in masoorie but later attended syndia school at Gwalior and he graduated in 1976 from Punjab university Chandigarh, with a bachelor of art and science for which he studied in prestigious arya college Ludhiana. His father died of cardiac arrest in 1992.

A 1^st gen entrepreneur, mittal started his 1^st business in 1976 at the age 18 with the capital investment of ₨ 20000 borrowed by his father. His 1^st business was to make crank shafts for local bicycles manufacturers.In 1980 he along with his brother rakesh , rajan,stated an import named bharathi overseas trading co.in 1984 he started asemblish push button phones in India and in 1992 he successfully build  one of the 4 phone network license auctioned in India.

In may 2008 it emerged that sunil bharathiu mittal was exploing the possibility of MTN group of buying MTN group, a south Africa based telecommunication n co with coverage in 21 countries ij Africa and middle east. In 2012bharathi tied up with wall mart, the US retail giant, to start no. of retail stores across India.