Dhirubhai Ambani - A Tribute

By Dattaraj Salgaocar

To write about Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani, even if to pay a humble, though much deserved tribute, is, I confess, not at all an easy task. Even more so to one like me, who looked at him not merely with the eyes of a much loved son-in-law but as a friend, a guide, as an elder, a surrogate father so to speak, since the death in 1984 of my only father, the much respected and fondly remembered Vassudeva M. Salgaocar.

When Vikram, my son, and a passionate sports aficionado, and I made our plans to fly to Korea and Japan for the World Cup 2002, the furthest thought from our mind was that our trip could be cut short by a grave and irreparable family tragedy.

I was in Seoul, South Korea, with Vikram, at the Hotel Coex Intercontinental. It was Monday June 24. We had had a successful meeting with POSCO, buyers, of our iron ore, earlier in the evening and we were looking forward to watching the first semi-finals of the World Cup, with South Korea to play Germany, the next day in Seoul, as guests of POSCO. The phone woke me up around 11.30 p.m. It was my brother-in-law Anil on the line. He said, "Papa is not well. It is better you and Vikram come back tonight or tomorrow." Anil added, "I will be speaking to Dipti (my wife) and Isheta (my daughter) and sending our plane tonight to fetch them to Mumbai." I was absolutely shocked. I asked, "How is Papa?" He said, "Not good." I then realised that he must be really serious and told Anil that I would come by the "earliest flight" to Mumbai. I spoke to Dipti and she started crying on the phone and I could sense that all was not well. I told Dipti, "We have to all pray", and I would be in Mumbai in a day. Vikram was awake by now and was quite simply stunned at the news. "Can never be possible", he said. We could easily get a flight out of Seoul and drove from Mumbai airport straight to Breach Candy Hospital.

Papa had had a massive stroke the previous day in the afternoon after having spent a regular day at the office. The best team of doctors was in place, but they gave him a few hours to a day. The whole family was devastated. He was a very healthy person for his age, of 69 years, and only two days earlier I had spoken to him and he sounded so cheerful. The next day and the days following saw countless number of visitors to the hospital, including media persons. Friends and well wishers offered prayers and poojas in many religious places. We all prayed for a miracle. Papa, we kept hoping against hope, would, as ever, fight back. Indeed, he fought back for 12 days, proving his doctors wrong. It was as if he was giving the family time to adjust to his not being able to be with us.

I was in a predicament. I had a very important event in Tokyo on July 5, where we were commemorating 50 years of our very happy association with Nippon Steel Corporation (NSC), the world's largest steel-maker and Itochu which the Chairman of NSC, Mr. Imai (also Chairman of the powerful Kedanren in Japan) and Mr. Sumie, President of Itochu Corporation were to attend. I did not know if I could attend the event (which was fixed almost a year in advance), and be back with Papa before he leaves us. In my heart I knew I would always have Papa's blessings and that he would not leave me till I returned from this very important event for me. Indeed! I left for Japan on July 4, attended the function on July 5 and returned on July 6 reaching the hospital to be with Papa at 9.00 p.m. He breathed his last around 11.50 on the night of July 6. It was the third saddest day of my life, after losing my own father in 1984 and my mother in 1996.

"Bubble that Burst"
My first meeting with him dates back to the early seventies. My father, owned a flat in Usha Kiran, then the tallest building in Mumbai, on the 14th floor and the Ambanis lived on the 22nd floor. My father and he had many common friends, especially Saraswats from the banking sector like Mr K K Pai and the late Mr S S Nadkarni. But their closest friend was the gifted and brilliant, late Mr T A Pai who, after becoming Chairman of Syndicate Bank, rose to be the Industries Minister at the centre. I became friendly with Mr Ambani's sons, Mukesh, the eldest who was studying Chemical Engineering at UDCT and Anil, studying Chemistry at K C College. During that period I met Mr Ambani a few times and he used to always greet me with a firm handshake or a thump on my back. He always used to talk animatedly in an interactive way ending almost every short sentence with a "Kya? or Kitna? when he quoted a figure". Isn't it? Don't you agree? It was always a brief two-way inter-active and engaging conversation. He always had a glint in his sharp eyes. He would be dead serious at times but always end with a loud chuckle, grin or guffaw. He had the mannerism of holding out the palm of his hand frequently for me to clap on it or just touch it when I agreed or replied; in fact, to signify that I was in tune with him. This was a mannerism he continued with till the end with all people he liked.

The shiny polyester look was very much in vogue in the late seventies, thanks to the aggressive marketing of Reliance. It was a convenience fabric for the masses requiring little looking-after and care. A family friend of ours, the famous ad-man, Frank Simoes, coined a beautiful punch line for the Reliance textile brand name Vimal for the sari range, "A woman expresses herself in many languages, Vimal is one of them." Vimal fabrics were a huge success and Mr. Ambani planned a scorching growth plan. Instead of going to the banks and financial institutions, he dared go public in 1977. He himself recommended that I buy his shares at the time of the public issue when a lot of blue-chip MNCs like Levers, Colgate, etc were also coming out with public issues. I invested what little I could at that age in Reliance shares (which I still hold) despite caution advisories by some share brokers inspired by crab-like mentalities of the traditional family-owned textile owners who spread the word that Reliance was "a bubble". Mr Ambani proved wrong all his critics. The Reliance share price continued to grow. Admittedly, he revolutionised the share market by rewarding his shareholders handsomely and soon the middle class and common masses started pouring in their money into the series of Reliance share and debenture issues which followed. As he jokingly said, "I am the bubble that burst!"

"Be like the Sun"
Mukesh and I were planning to go abroad for our MBA studies after engineering and were applying together to various US colleges. Anil, two years younger, also planned likewise. Mr Ambani, who believed in good education, would caution me that after I return with an MBA, I would have to unlearn what I had learnt and study how to do business in India. Once in one of his moods he told me, "You are like the moon, kya?" He continued, "You are shining in the reflected glory of your father. You should be like the sun, a star, and have your own light and glory," stretching out the palm of his hand, which I touched in agreement. And, typically he stretched the palm of his hand, which I touched in agreement. It took a while to sink in and I realised he was absolutely right. He had this great ability to come up with analogies and similes which conveyed the meaning in a way nothing else could.
Upon my return from the USA in 1981 with a Wharton MBA, I joined the family business and, like all business people, had to do the rounds of Delhi in the days of the Licence Raj. I once met him on a flight from Delhi to Mumbai and told him how frustrating and cumbersome I found the licence and permit regulatory environment. He said, "You are a Brahmin, aren't you?" I said, "Yes". He cautioned, "Whenever you have a pooja you have to sit for many hours for the rituals starting with washing the idols, putting flowers and offering food to the Gods, isn't it?" Again, I said, "Yes", though not fully understanding where this was taking me. He continued, "Then you have to appease and feed the priests, the fire Gods, the Brahmins, the guests, the cow, the crow and so on. Only then can you eat and at that moment don't you enjoy your meal?" I nodded in agreement. He concluded, "In India the position is that the system is the same. You can only enjoy your meal after you take care of everybody else, kya?" On another occasion he said, "I have no ego. I'm willing to salaam anybody."

Dipti (who I had been dating for a few years) and I decided to marry in 1983. My father and her father (Dipti's was the first wedding in the Ambani family) were both elated with the news, despite our very different backgrounds and cultures. Both had great mutual respect and regard for each other as I guess both were self-made men, born in poverty, barely educated and had achieved their successes by sheer determination and grit. In fact, they had so much in common that till my father died prematurely on October 13, 1984 at 67 years, they were in constant touch, my father enjoying a Campari with him over hot onion bhajias. My father's demise brought me even closer to my father-in-law and soon I started calling him "Papa" as the rest of his family did.

Doting grandpa
He was delighted at the birth of our son Vassudev Vikram on October 25, 1984. He was his first grandchild and became the centre of his attention and time. No day went by without him asking Dipti or me about Vikram. He was the apple of his eye. When Vikram started playing with toys based on cartoon and comics, he was very upset and dismissive. He used to tell us that Vikram should know stories of real life heroes and heroines like Shivaji, Rana Pratap Singh, and Jhansi Ki Rani and visit real places. When Vikram was in Mumbai for his holidays, he would tell Vikram the stories of those heroes, of their courage and dare-devilry, and in fact, almost hired a history teacher. When Vikram was just over five years, he created such a hype for Shivaji that he was insistent on Raigad. He then made arrangements the next day for Vikram to go to Raigad along with his secretary and servants, one of them with a videocamera to document Vikram's feat. His sheer motivation and persuasion made Vikram climb the 1500-odd steps of Raigad, a feat which Vikram has always been proud of.
In February 1986 he suffered a cerebral stroke. A normal person might never have recovered, but Papa, with his sheer determination and will power, overcame the illness proving even respected doctors wrong. His mind became even more razor-sharp. He took it in his stride and countered the vicious media onslaught initiated by his friend turned foe-Ramnath Goenka, in the Express Group of newspapers, and a hostile Central government with V P Singh, the then Finance Minister, relentlessly hounding him. He valiantly defended and fought back with strength and honour and set a shining example for us, especially Mukesh and Anil, who got baptised by fire in this ordeal. In the post-liberalisation period, he set his goals very high and aimed to be a global competitive presence in petrochemicals. He shunned the protection sought by the Bombay Club and said boldly, "Pedigree is no longer of any significance in democratic India; it is performance that is crucial."

Faith in God
In 1999, Reliance commissioned the largest grassroots oil refinery in the world, of 27 million tonnes per year at Jamnagar, in a record time of less than three years. Many critics argued that Reliance grew because it cornered licences and permits during the Licence Raj. But Reliance's quantum jump to success was post-liberalisation. Last year, Reliance's revenues were Rs 65,000 crore, with a net profit of Rs 4,604 crore and over five million investors with businesses encompassing petrochemicals, textiles, oil and gas exploration, power, IT, telecom. Reliance sales equalled three per cent of India's GDP and contributed 10 per cent to India's indirect tax revenues. In fact, without the Licence Raj, I am convinced that what he achieved in 30-odd years, he might have achieved in much less time. That a person born in a dot of a village in Gujarat, called Chorwad, filling petrol at a Shell station in Aden and arriving in Bombay with Rs 500 in his pocket, could achieve this in his lifetime was indeed a miracle. "The problem with Indians," he said once, "is that we have lost the habit of thinking big." He firmly believed that "ideas are no one's monopoly"' and that you did not need an initiation to make profits.

He had an unshakeable faith and trust in God, but he was not ritualistic. His wife, Kokilaben, is a deeply religious and spiritual person and he never discouraged her from performing any poojas or organising bhajans or pravachans. Last year, when she had organised a week-long programme of the Ramayan discourse by the respected Bhaishri Rameshbhai Oza, Papa told Bhaishri privately that his thousands of disciples based in Porbandar should work on building roads and lay water-pipelines providing water to the people of Saurashtra instead of doing bhajans all the time! Bhaishri was speechless for a change, but visibly impressed.

He left the nurturing of his whole family to his loving and capable wife, Kokilaben, who was indeed his biggest strength. She ran his home inculcating the right values in her four children, with her two daughters, Dipti and Nina, imbibing the qualities to become solid home-makers. He played no favourites in the family, but my son Vikram was his only exception. He was his favourite, I guess being his first grandchild. Last year he was very happy and excited that Vikram was going to stay with him in Mumbai while studying science at the Jai Hind College. Everyday he talked to him about his grand plans for India and for Reliance. He involved him in meetings with his key people, bankers and politicians to expose and educate him. He would frequently ask me if Vikram was happy in Mumbai, which I replied in the affirmative. But he was even more thrilled when Vikram himself told him after a while that he was happier in Mumbai than Goa because of Papa.

Family First
He was a loving and caring husband, father and father-in-law and a doting grandfather to his nine grandchildren. He was generous, broadminded and liberal. In his early days in Mumbai, Dipti told me that every weekend the family used to go on outings together. He never spent any time with business organisations like FICCI, CII, etc. nor on any other hobby or indulgence. Family always came first for him. He also inspired in the family fearlessness and a sense of adventure, leading by example. He would gleefully recall how as a young man he swam in the Yemeni Sea in the middle of the night jumping off a ship to win an ice-cream bet or his feats as a young NCC cadet in Junagadh during India's independence, his wildlife escapades and so on. He loved nature with a passion and many of our exciting holidays were in wildlife parks. At such holidays he would tolerate no lazing around. A stickler for time, he would be up early and made us get ready at the crack of dawn. The holidays always were jam-packed with outdoor activities and very little rest, so much so that I sometimes wanted to go on a relaxed vacation after such a holiday.

He was generous and big-hearted, yet fair, firm and disciplined. He laid a lot of emphasis to his family on exercise, physical fitness and good health. He daily exercised for two or three hours. Never ever did hecomplain that he was tired or in pain. Before his stroke he enjoyed trekking every weekend in the monsoon, in Khandala. I remember joining him for a trek in the Khandala hills in the monsoons of 1985 without any assistants by his side for over six hours, which almost incapacitated me for the following week. He believed that if one enjoyed good health and had a good family, the sky was the limit for success.

Early in life, I guess, he realised God had chosen him for a purpose and mission on earth. This faith in God gave him great simplicity, humility and modesty, besides strength and courage. He accepted, gracefully, all the prestigious awards bestowed on him. Whenever I congratulated him on receiving one more award or a major milestone achieved by Reliance, he would typically play it down and say, "Theek hai." If I commented that his fan following was growing internationally and the likes of Bill Clinton wanted to meet him, he would look me straight in the eye putting his left palm on his chin and modestly say, "Achcha?", showing surprise on his face. He was the same person to all, whether it was a politician, a relative, his old friend from Chorward, a professional, an artiste, a driver or a servant.

Trust in People
A few years back, I went with him and the entire family to Chorwad. I was surprised to see his tiny tenement in a chawl. There he had spent his childhood. He was chuckling with glee as he showed us, especially Vikram, around Chorwad. He mixed freely with the people there. From their faces, I could see, they simply adored him. He never forgot his less fortunate childhood friends in Gujarat, many of whom he helped in their bad times for years. And unlike many other self-made millionaires, he neither tried whitewashing or forgetting his humble beginnings.

Another unique quality he had was the ability to trust people. He could size and evaluate a person in no time and guess his or her talents. He had an innate and endearing quality to manage human relations, which would bring out the best in people. For him relationships mattered a great deal. He said, "We must have the courage to trust people. Distrust kills initiative." He believed people were his biggest asset. He empowered them, but also said "I delegate, but do not abdicate".

He loved India with passion. On many an occasion, he discussed my criticism of India's economy and infrastructure with the reason that the young were not seeing opportunities to make India world-class. Last month, when we were together in the US, he took us to see the well-designed and planned US gas (petrol) stations and truck stops. He took keen interest in all the details as he told me that his 3000-odd Reliance petrol pumps, which were soon to be set up in India, would be of even better standard. Nothing sub-standard for the Indian customer, only the best. Such was his sense of pride in India! He strongly believed, like Gandhi, that India's strength lay in its villages and agriculture. In the last ten years or so, he would talk more about our country's problems - water, education, agriculture, power, roads, health care, Kashmir and so on. He had radical ideas, for a change. Agriculture to him meant employing the best technology for the wastelands of India to generate high-yielding products; water meant irrigating the arid regions of India by connecting all of its rivers and building dams and so on. In fact, he convinced my daughter Isheta when she was 10 years of age that she should become a scientist and convert sea water into sweet (potable) water to green deserts of India. All his plans were to significantly improve or touch the lives of at least 20 per cent of India, otherwise he would not conceptualise an idea.
He had amazing foresight and instinct. At times, he could almost see into the future. For example, he realised that succession has always been a difficult issue in corporate history and had led to the downfall of many a business group and empire. Since 1986, he delegated to his highly talented sons, Mukesh and Anil, all the day-to-day operations, with him providing the direction and strategic vision. He made his sons partners and co-builders of his business instead of mere spoilt inheritors. He said, "Reliance is a concept now in which the Ambanis have become insignificant".

Incredible Legacy
Abraham Lincoln's biographer said that the shadow of a huge tree could best be measured when it falls down. Nobody, including me, could ever imagine that Papa had lakhs of open admirers who loved and respected him, instead of only thousands of fans. I saw hordes and masses of people, almost a lakh, most of them unknown to him come to see him off at this final journey to the Chandanwadi crematorium on July 7. I could see that he had touched their lives and hearts in a manner no person had in the history of Mumbai. No businessman in India has ever had so many people at a funeral.

Before India's independence, Albert Einstein, one of the world's greatest scientists, said about Mahatma Gandhi "Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood." Post-independence, another Gujarati, Dhirubhai Ambani, left his impact as the greatest visionary businessman, a legend and an icon, not just by creating a $12.5 billion empire from scratch, but by firing the imagination and passion of every Indian to make their dream a reality and build a great country. Mahatma Gandhi, I could never possibly meet, but only respect and admire. But I had the great fortune of knowing Papa whose incredible legacy and memories will forever live on with me.
I am sure his story will inspire and fire the imagination of every Indian to improve the lot of every citizen here and build a great nation, second to none. As he said while receiving the Wharton Dean's medal, "If one Dhirubhai can do so much, just think what a 1000 Dhirubhais can do for this country. There are easily a 1000 Dhirubhais, if not more, in this country". A strong and modern India will be a true Shraddhanjali, a tribute, to one of India's greatest sons, Dhirubhai Ambani.