Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani commonly known as Dhirubhai
Ambani was born on 28 December 1932, at Chorwad,
Junagadh in Gujarat, When he was 16 years old, he
moved to Aden, Yemen. Initially, Dhirubhai worked as a
dispatch clerk with A. Besse & Co. Married to Kokilaben.
Dhirubhai also worked in Dubai for sometime. He
returned to India and founded the Reliance Commercial
Corporation with an initial capital of Rs .15000. Dhirubhai
set up the business in partnership with Champaklal
Damani from whom he parted ways in 1965.

Dhirubhai started his first textile mill at Naroda, near

Ahmedabad in 1966 and started the brand "Vimal".
Dhirubhai Ambani is credited with having started the
equity cult in India. With the passage of time, Dhirubhai
diversified into petrochemicals and sectors like
telecommunications, information technology, energy,
power, retail, textiles, infrastructure services, capital
markets, and logistics.
Dhirubhai courted controversy all throughout his life. Many a times, he has been
accused of unethical business practices and has been accused of having
manipulated government policies to suit his own needs. He was involved in an open
spat with Nusli Wadia of Bombay Dyeing. The end to this tussle came only after
Dhirubhai Ambani suffered a stroke. While Dhirubhai Ambani was recovering in San
Diego, his sons Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani managed the affairs.

The Indian Express had turned the guns against Reliance and was directly blaming the
government for not doing enough to penalize Reliance Industries. The battle between
Wadia - Goenka and the Ambanis took a new direction and became a national crisis.
Gurumurthy and another journalist, Mulgaokar consorted with President Giani Zail
Singh and ghost-wrote a hostile letter to the Prime Minister on his behalf. The Indian
Express published a draft of the President's letter as a scoop, not realizing that Zail
Singh had made changes to the letter before sending it to Rajiv Gandhi. Ambani had
won the battle at this point. Now, while the tussle was directly between the Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Ramnath Goenka, Ambani made a quiet exit. The
government then raided the Express guest house in Delhi's Sunder Nagar and found
the original draft with corrections in Mulgaokar's handwriting. By 1988-89, Rajiv's
government retaliated with a series of prosecutions against the Indian Express. Even
then, Goenka retained his iconic stature because, to many people, he seemed to be
replaying his heroic defiance during the Emergency regime.
Dhirubhai Ambani won many words and accolades during his life. In
November 2000, he was conferred the 'Man of the Century' award by
Chemtech Foundation and Chemical Engineering World for his contribution
to the growth and development of the chemical industry in India. In June
1998, he was awarded the Dean's Medal by The Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania, for setting an outstanding example of
leadership. Dhirubhai Ambani was also named the "Man of 20th Century" by
the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

Dhirubhai Ambani suffered a "brain stroke: on June 24, 2002 and was
admitted to the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai. He had suffered another
stroke in February 1986 which had paralyzed his right hand. He passed
away on July 6, 2002. On Dhirubhai Ambani's first death anniversary, the
Union Government released a postage stamp in his memory.
R  
 

 
J.R.D. Tata was born in Paris, France, the second
child of Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata and his French
wife, Suzanne "Sooni" Brière. His father was a first
cousin of Jamsetji Tata, a pioneer industrialist in
India. 'Jeh', or 'JRD' as he was commonly known,
came to be regarded as the most famous industrial
pioneer in modern India. As his mother was
French, he spent much of his childhood in France
and as a result, French was his first language. Tata
also attended the French Foreign Legion. He
attended the Cathedral and John Connon School,
Bombay.
J.R.D. Tata was inspired early by aviation pioneer
Louis Blériot, and took to flying. In 1929 Tata got
the first pilot license issued in India. He later came
to be known as the father of Indian civil aviation.
He founded India's first commercial airline, 'Tata
Airlines', in 1932, which in 1946 became Air India,
now India's national airline. J.R.D. Tata studied
engineering at the University of Cambridge. At the
age of 34, he became Chairman of Tata Sons, the
holding Company of the Tata Group.
For decades, J R D directed the huge Tata Group of companies, with major
interests in Steel, Engineering, Power,Chemicals and Hospitality. He was
famous for succeeding in business while maintaining high ethical standards
- refusing to bribe politicians or use the black market. Under J R D's
Chairmanship, the number of companies in the Tata Group, grew from 15 to
over 100. Monetarily, the assets of Tata group grew from Rs 620 Million to
over Rs 100 Billion.
He was awarded the Legion d'honneur, by the French Government in 1954.
In 1979, Tata was the recipient of the Tony Jannus Award for his
distinguished contributions to commercial aviation. He also received the
prestigious Guggenheim Medal for aviation in 1988. He was conferred
India's highest civilian award in 1992 for his service to industry and nation
building. In the same year, he was also bestowed with the United Nations
Population Award for his crusading endeavors towards initiating and
successfully implementing the family planning movement in India, much
before it became an official government policy. He died in Geneva,
Switzerland in 1993 at the age of 89. He is buried at Père Lachaise
Cemetery in Paris.
 —   

One of the icons of Indian industry, —
 




is remembered as the man who laid the
foundation of the Birla Empire. He was a very close
associate of Mahatma Gandhi and used to advise him
on economic matters. The founder of the Federation of
Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI),
G.D. Birla was born on April 10, 1894 in Pilani. He
entered the world of business during the First World
War. He established the Keshoram Cotton mills and
then shifted his base to Calcutta or present-day
Kolkata, where he established the Birla Jute Mills.
This was not liked by the European merchants who
tried out all means, fair as well as foul to have his
business shut, but a resolute G.D. Birla stood his
ground. His business boomed during World War I,
when there was a great demand for his products. He
then went ahead to establish the Birla Brothers Limited
in 1919. In the post-independence period, Birla
diversified into tea, textiles, cement, chemicals, rayon,
steel tubes and other areas.
Along with his business activities, G.D. Birla is remembered for founding
several educational institutions including the Birla Institute of Technology
and Sciences (BITS), Pilani, which ranks in the forefront of engineering
institutions in the country. He was also instrumental in founding many
temples, planetariums, and hospitals. He was awarded the Padma
Vibhusan by the Government of India in 1957. The G.D. Birla award for
scientific research has been established in his honour to encourage and
reward scientists for their contribution to scientific research. This modern-
day legend of India passed away on January 11, 1983.
  




   
 
was born on June 15, 1950 in
Sadulpur, Rajasthan, India and is presently the CEO
& Chairman of Arcelor Mittal. Lakshmi Nivas Mittal
was listed in the Forbes List of Billionaires in 2006
as the richest Indian and the fifth richest man in the
world with an estimated wealth around of $25.0
billion and is the richest man in the United Kingdom.
Young Lakshmi Nivas Mittal spent his first years in
Sadulpur, before his father moved to Kolkata.
Lakshmi graduated from St. Xavier's College,
Calcutta. He founded Mittal Steel in 1976, which
soon became a global steel producer with
operations on 14 countries. His success mantra lies
in the identification, acquisition and turnaround of
many loss making steel companies all across the
world.
In 1994, he took over the international operations of his family's steel
business. Arcelor Mittal is presently the world's largest producer of low and
mid-grade steels, with operations in Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, South
Africa, Poland, Czech Republic, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and many other
countries. Mittal is considered to be close to the British Prime Minister Tony
Blair and has donated large sums of money to the Labour party coffers. He
bought his residence at 18-19 Kensington Palace Gardens from Formula
One car racing boss Bernie Ecclestone in 2004 for £57.1 million ($105.7
million), the highest-ever price paid for a house.
His son Aditya is the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) of Arcelor Mittal. Mr.
Mittal has been nominated as a member of the Foreign Investment Council
in Kazakhstan, the International Investment Council in South Africa, the
World Economic Forum's International Business Council, besides being a
Director of ICICI Bank Limited and being on the Advisory Board of the
Kellogg School of Management in the United States.
  

The CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of the Britian
based telecom major Vodafone Group plc., Arun
Sarin was born on October 21, 1954 at
Panchmari, Madhya Pradesh. After doing his
schooling from the military boarding school in
Bangalore, Arun graduated from IIT Kharagpur in
1975. During his school and IIT days, he excelled
in studies, sports and various extracurricular
activities. Thereafter, he moved to the United
States where he did his MS in Engineering from
the University of California, Berkeley in 1977,
going on to complete an MBA from the same
university in 1978.
The same year he started his career with a
Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm. In 1981
he moved on to Natomas as a corporate
development manager. He started his telecom
career in 1984, when he joined the Pacific Telesis
Group in San Francisco. The year 1995 saw Arun
Sarin launching a new wireless-communications
company with his mentor Sam Ginn. Arun Sarin
served as the President and Chief Operating
Officer of Air Touch from 1997 to 1999.
 The year 1999 saw AirTouch and Vodafone merging to form Vodafone-
AirTouch, where he became the chief executive. Arun Sarin resigned from
Vodafone-AirTouch in 2000 and became the CEO at Info Space, an Internet
infrastructure company. He moved away from Info space in July 2001 and
started a telecommunications company called Accel -KKR Telecom. In
2003, Arun became the CEO of Vodafone.
He became the CEO of Vodafone after its takeover driven expansion phase
between 1999 and 2002. He has focused his energies on emerging markets
like India. Under his stewardship, Vodafone successfully bid U$11.1 billion
for a majority stake in the Indian mobile operator, Hutch.
Rajeshwari Bansal,Grade 10,St.Mark·s School.India