Dhirubhai Ambani was an Indian business magnate and entrepreneur who founded Reliance Industries, petrochemicals, a communications, power, and textiles conglomerate and the only privately owned Indian company in the Fortune 500.
Ambani took his company public in 1984. Dhirubhai has been one among the select Forbes billionaires and has also figured in the Sunday Times list of top 50 businessmen in Asia. His life has often been referred to as a true “rags to riches” story.
Dhirubhai started off as a small time worker with Arab merchants in the 1950s and moved to Mumbai in 1958 to start his own business in spices. After making modest profits, he moved into textiles and opened his mill near Ahmedabad. Dhirubhai founded Reliance Industries in 1958 and today the company, with over 85,000 employees, provides almost 5% of the Central Government’s total tax revenue. (more…)