Mukesh Ambani

"I am a big believer that technology shapes mankind."

"Internet the biggest discovery after printing press."

"Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of self-reliance can be attained by making use of Internet and technology."

"Broadband and digital services will no longer be a luxury item - a scarce commodity - to be rationed amongst the privileged few,"

"My first memories are of the early '60s at mount road which was then an emerging area. We were a close-knit family and the four of us -- Dipti, Nina, Anil and I -- were left to do what we wanted. There were boundaries, of course, but within those, we were not micro-managed. Things have changed so much now. When my kids, Isha and Akash, were in the third standard, we behaved as though it was our exam."

"Our own childhood was totally different. I guess when you are left on your own, you find your true potential. I remember my father never came to our school even once. Nevertheless, he was hugely interested in our all-round development for which he did some amazing things."

"A third track running at that time, apart from academics and the fun stuff, was that my father shared with me his passion for business and entrepreneurship from very early on. Even when I was in high school, I used to spend long hours at office on weekends."

"So, these were the four components of my upbringing -- the academic stuff where I was left to myself, Mahendrabhai, my father's passion for creating Reliance and the last piece was his deep links with the family."

"And it has to be non-academic. It is easy to be with your kids and say let's do homework together. But we try to do things, beyond doing lunches and dinners. I learnt that from my father. He was a big nature lover and during our school days, we went to different places every Sunday -- we walked through the forest or had a bath in streams."

"I have turned into a big nature fan as well....I can afford it more today. These childhood influences have shaped me into what I am today."

"Even when I was doing chemical engineering, I was working almost full time for Reliance. I finished college at 2.30 pm and went straight to the office. I remember, we were raided and my father was in the US."

"When we started work on setting up a polyester filament yarn project, my chemical engineering and business school background helped me in organizing the work, creating reporting structures, motivating people... in all this, my father and Rasikbhai were two steps ahead of me."

"One of my biggest obsessions today is that senior people must give bright 25-year olds the opportunity to contribute meaningfully."

"In the journey of an entrepreneur, the most important thing is self-belief and the ability to convert that belief into reality."

"The first 200-odd people who built Patalganga with me are still around, running different businesses. It has gone into their psyche that we do things differently here. We have taken money from ordinary Indians and we are their trustees. When this is drilled into thousands of people, you automatically get performance."

"In the '80s, when I came in, the ground rules were made clear to me. 'Build this business from scratch, without taking anyone from Reliance.' That forced you to be very disciplined. I looked around and figured out in three months that this industry runs on heroes."

"Even the managers. It was all a feudal style of management. If we had accepted that style, we would not have grown. It was simply not a scalable model. Of course, the easiest thing would have been to follow it. But we had a disruptive style of management. So we said, 'we don't want people carrying their wisdom in notebooks as if it is some kind of secretive operation.'"

"We tried to create an open environment. In today's language, we created SOPs and SOCs (standard operating procedures, standard operating conditions) so that everybody was on the same page. We wanted an organisation where everybody contributes but the business is not dependent on a few individuals"

"We were clear that we had to be internationally competitive and were passionate about building competencies that were the best in the world even when the tariffs were very high. It was an obsession with me to beat the Taiwanese and the Koreans who dominated the polyester business in the '70s."

"My reference points were US companies. We were hugely influenced by large US chemical companies, especially DuPont. It was a very open company and we could take advantage of their learnings. The US is also a very open society. I could to go the US Association of Chemical Engineers and get the standards, data, etc."

"I was very focussed on building various competencies in Reliance and we were not ready to do two things at the same time. It was a big risk for us to get into IT, especially because it was hugely effort-intensive. In my language, I said we have too much soap on our body and we need to take a bath in the chemicals business."

"We got into life sciences as a defence mechanism in the late '90s"

"Then, we stumbled on human and plant biotech. We were fortunate to have some good people and decided that Reliance can build this business over 5-10 years without any great revenue pressures. In the mainstream business, there was telecom or what I call infocomm."

"We got into telecom in the '90s by bidding for cellular licences. But I felt that the real value is in the convergence of information and communication; pure communication will not deliver a sustainable value; that is why we called ourselves infocomm. It was learning a whole new domain. We brought in experts from the outside but we essentially did it with proven Reliance people."

"The US and Europe saw large players in foods by the '50s and '60s; but in India, food has always been a disorganised, fragmented value chain. We believe that India's purchasing power will be food-dominated. The first thing we need is safe to eat food that will, in turn, meet many other needs."

"We are working at putting the most modern technology in farms at Indian costs. I always say whatever the US implements in dollars we should be able to do it at exchange rate of Rs 10, then we would be globally competitive."

"We all know India has a huge competitive advantage -- we have the largest arable land, focused sunshine, sensible utilisation of water in 30% of land. The question is what should we do to make the US market -- the most difficult market in the world -- accept our produce. For that, we need traceability. It is a simple technology, which we are giving the farmers. It needs certification and verification processes -- to us it is like a process plant. You can then get the output, sort it and grade it."

"From a million people, it will benefit 10 million people. If that is what has happened in software, imagine what will happen in agriculture."

"The food market is much bigger than the software services market. And the money goes straight into the hands of millions of farmers. The spinoffs are enormous -- jobs, houses, durables, a whole new consumption boom will start in rural areas."

"The most employment-intensive industry in the world is retail and our next generation needs these jobs. India has a strategy for the next generation of doctors, engineers and biotech graduates, etc. But for the country as a whole, what we need to resolve is how to create sensible jobs for undergraduates and or those even less educated"

"We only have a superficial knowledge about the true rural India -- the power structure, how to operate in tehsils, what are their true concerns, etc. But we think we can significantly change purchasing power and how we live. That's what motivates us"

"We offer to protect their savings in a job here. If you earn $100,000 a year there, you also spend $80,000 and save $15,000-$20,000. We say, if you work for us in India, we will ensure you save $15,000 dollars a year and are part of something exciting without a loss to you."

"But this doesn't work without a scheme. If you ask me to build a power plant, I cannot give that power at 3 cents or 4 cents, unless I put up a 2000 MW project. It's the same for an airport, seaport and all the other stuff. You need to spread costs over a sensible size to keep unit costs low."

"People first want to spend money on food -- that is common across the world. The second, in India, is education. In many parts of the world, it comes way down the list of priorities. So, there is a huge opportunity."

"We have not invested well in marketing ourselves. It is partly because of my trait. I believe that if my conviction is right, I will not need to go and explain myself to anyone. I believed that ultimately everyone will figure out what you are. We are changing this approach."

"I am very bullish on India because it is really the aspiration of a billion people and ours is a county where all the billion count. There are some countries in the world where one person counts, there are some where the Politburo or 12 people count."

"The Treaty of India is that all our billion people count and they have aspirations."

"India's story is a "really a bottom-up" one and not the other-way round. We are on long-term growth trajectory and this is just not growth in terms of GDP numbers, this is really for well being of each and every Indian and that's the aspiration."

"I think that China is maintaining steady growth, it is not decelerating. Europe has found its own transition path and they will transgress through the financial system in an orderly way and it is my expectation. India has had some slow growth. But, I am very optimistic on India,"

"As my father was privileged to have witnessed in 1947, independence of India from Britain, I was privileged to have seen in 1991 India embracing economic reforms that liberated our country’s entrepreneurial energies. These two transitions set India on the path of development and had a profound on the world both political economic terms."

"The performance of Reliance shows an amazing trend when mapped against time. The inflection point was 1991. We grew exponentially, eventually becoming India’s biggest private enterprise, on the basis of freedom to compete against the best in the world."

"I believe India today is potentially poised for another even more stupendous leap on its upward trajectory. India’s relative weight in the global economy and in world affairs in general, is bound to grow for many reasons. By 2030, India is projected to overtake China as the most populous country in the world, with the third largest economy in US dollar terms. Furthermore India is a very young nation with nearly two thirds of its population below the age of thirty-five."

"For me, this is a moment of re-dedication to the values, vision and goals of my father, teacher and mentor, Dhirubhai Ambani. To lead by love, by trust, and by example, I learnt these principles from him with humility."

"Reliance will get listed on wall street because we want to benchmark ourselves with the top 100 companies of the world."

"I dream of India becoming one of four most powerful economies of the world. I believe this dream can be made a reality within our life times."

"a leader is only recognized when he can resolve all differences. My father had the veto power over all decisions and that veto power is mine. But in the last ten years, he never used his veto power. He would say, once you have fired you gun you no longer have the bullet with you...My father’s biggest legacy was his leadership. He used to say, a leader must have followers. Respect can not be demanded . I have to get others to say what I want to say."

"Mukesh is the hands-on manufacturing and operations man"

"Mukesh cut his teeth at the group’s Patalganga plant immediately after his stint at Stanford."

"Mukesh Ambani joined reliance in 1981 and imitated Reliance’s backward integration from textiles in to polyester fibres and further into petrochemicals."

"Mukesh has to his credit the direction and leading the creation of the world’s largest petroleum refinery at Jamnagar, India with a capacity of 540,000 barrels per day integrated with petrochemicals, power generation, port and related infrastructure at an investment of 25,000 crores."

"Mukesh took that vision [His father’s vision] to the next level at the beginning of India’s explosive growth in the late 1990s and 2000s and turning his father’s growing conglomerate into India’s largest company, whose taxes alone provide 5percent of all national government revenues."

"The most discussed building in Mumbai is probably the twenty –seven- story of Mukesh Ambani India’s wealthiest man and the head of Reliance Industries. Ambani’s personal wealth is estimated at just under $ 25 billion, just about a billion for each floor of his Mumbai home."