Dhirubhai Ambani

Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani

• born on December 28, 1932 in Chorwad, Gujarat.

• Dhirubhai started off as a small time worker with Arab merchants in the 1950s

• moved to Mumbai in 1958 to start his own business in spices.

• he moved into textiles and opened his mill near Ahmedabad.

During 1950s

• In the 1950s, the Yemini administration realized that their main unit of currency, the Rial, was disappearing fast.

• It was found that a young man in his twenties was placing unlimited buy orders for Yemini Rials.

• Rials, pure silver coins and was in much demand at the London Bullion Exchange. Young Dhirubhai bought the Rials, melted them into pure silver and sold it to the bullion traders in London.

• 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.

• Asia Times quotes: "His people skills were legendary. A former secretary reveals: "He was very helpful. He followed an 'open-door' policy. Employees could walk into his cabin and discuss their problems with him."

• Dhirubhai Ambani is credited with starting equity investing in India. More than 58,000 investors from various parts of India subscribed to Reliance's IPO in 1977. Dhirubhai was able to convince people of rural Gujarat that being shareholders of his company will only bring returns to their investment.

• Reliance Industries holds the distinction that it is the only Pvt. Co. whose several annual general meetings were held in stadiums.

Great Management Lessons From Dhirubhai Ambani

Roll up your sleeves and help

• sense of ‘do it yourself’ • He does not wait for infrastructure to be

created to support his operations. He goes out and builds it himself; be it a power plant for his petrochemical enterprise or a canal to bring water from large distances for his cooling plant

Be a safety net for your team

• There used to be a time when our agency Mudra was the target of some extremely vicious propaganda by our peers,

• he gently asked “M” if They needed any help in combating it.

• knowledge that he knew and cared for what his team was going through, and that he was there for Them if needed him, worked wonders for confidence

The silent benefactor.

• When he helped someone, he never ever breathed a word about it to anyone else

• "Expect the unexpected" just might have been coined for him.

Dream big, but dream with your eyes open.

• Whenever a task seemed too big to be accomplished, he would reply: " No is no answer!" Not only did he dream big, he taught all of us to do so too.

• his favorite phrase "dream with your eyes open"

Leave the professional alone!

• management techniques of him is different• the simplest strategies are often the hardest

to adopt. • “let professionals do the work”• This technique enforced responsibility among

his team

Change your orbit, constantly!

• Dhirubhai's "orbit theory." • This is no miracle. • when you change orbits, you will create

friction. The good news is that your enemies from your previous orbit will never be able to reach you in your new one. By the time resentment builds up in your new orbit, you should move to the next level. And so on.

The arm-around-the-shoulder leader

• It was Dhirubhai's very own signature style • Arm around the shoulder -With that one

simple gesture, he managed to achieve many things.

• This tendency that he had, to draw people towards him, manifested itself in countless ways.

The Dhirubhai theory of Supply creating Demand

• He was not an MBA. Nor an economist. But yet he took traditional market theory and stood it on its head. And succeeded.

• when everyone in India would build capacities only after a careful study of market, he went full steam ahead and created giants of manufacturing plants with unbelievable capacites.

Money is not a product by itself, it is a by-product, so don't chase it

• He did not breathe a word about profits, nor about becoming the richest

• A by-product is something that you don't set out to produce. It is the spin off when you create something larger.

Success

• Success in attaining that goal will eventually ring in the cash. For instance, if you work towards creating a name for yourself and earning a good reputation, then money is a logical outcome.

• People will pay for your product or service if it is good

• Sounds too simplistic for belief? Well, look around you and you will know exactly how true it is.