TA T I O N

R ESE N
A P C E O S
T O P 1 0
ON
PRESEN
TED BY:
MOLOY
BHARAT PAUL
IYA VID
YA BHA
VAN
 These are the jewels in India
Inc's crown... men who have
created industry empires that
will inspire generations. We
present 10 of India's top CEOs.
They have not been ranked and
their names appear in no
particular order.
Steel tycoon Lakshmi Niwas Mittal is the richest Indian in the
world, with an estimated wealth of $25 billion. He resides in LAKSHMI N MITTAL
London, has his company registered in the Netherlands, but still
holds an Indian passport. Although Mittal Steel was already the
world's biggest steel company, his king-sized ambitions were
evident when he took over steel giant Arcelor to create a new
steel behemoth -- Arcelor-Mittal. L N Mittal left India in the mid-
1970s to start his career. He was sent to Indonesia by his father
to shut down the family's ailing steel plant and sell the land.
Instead, young Mittal saw an opportunity and turned the plant
around.
To prove that this was no fluke, Mittal acquired a 1.3 million
tonne, Iscot Steel plant in Trinidad & Tobago, which was losing
$100,000 a day. One year of Mittal-style management and it was
making profits, the LN Mittal legend was born. That move
helped him get into America.
The Mexican government seeing the success that Mittal made
of Iscot, asked him to take over their ailing steel plants in 1992.
But it was not all that smooth. In 1994 Mittal had differences with
his brothers and father, and went on to form his own company.
The following year Mittal entered the European market,
acquiring the 5 million tonne Kazakh steel plant, Karmet.
Meanwhile, Mittal had listed Ispat International on the New
York and Amsterdam Stock Exchanges in 1997. Eight years later
Mittal Steel became the world's largest steel maker when he
took over the US's largest steel producer -- the International
Steel Group. He then consolidated all his steel holdings into
Mittal Steel.
Ratan Naval Tata, a bachelor, is the chairman of
the Tata Group, India's most respected
conglomerate. He was born into a Parsi family in
RATAN TATA
Mumbai (then called Bombay) to Soonoo and
Naval Hormusji Tata on December 28, 1937. He
did a short stint with Jones and Emmons in Los
Angeles, California, before returning to India in
1962. He had earlier turned down an IBM job
offer.
He joined the family business in 1962 and worked
with many of his group's companies. He took over
as group chairman from the legendary J R D Tata
in 1991.
Since then, he has been instrumental in boosting
the fortunes of the Tata Group, which has
amongst the largest market capitalisations in the
Indian stock markets.
Tata Motors developed the Tata Indica in 1998.
This was the first 'entirely Indian' passenger car.
Ratan Tata's dream now is to manufacture a car
costing just Rs 100,000.
Ratan Tata holds a degree in Architecture and
Structural Engineering from Cornell University.
He has also done the Advanced Management
Program from Harvard Business School in 1974-
1975.
Ratan Tata was honoured with one of India's
highest civilian awards, the Padma Bhushan, on
January 26, 2000.
Mukesh Ambani, the chairman and managing director of
India's largest private sector enterprise -- Reliance
Industries Limited -- was born on April 19, 1957. His father, MUKESH D AMBANI
the legendary Dhirubhai Ambani, was then a small
businessman who later on rose to become one of the
legends of Indian industry.
Mukesh joined Reliance Industries in 1981 and was the
brain behind Reliance's backward integration from
textiles into polyester fibres and into petrochemicals.
During the process of backward integration, Mukesh
Ambani led the creation of 51 new, world-class
manufacturing facilities involving diverse technologies
that raised Reliance's manufacturing capacities manifold.
The world's largest grassroots petroleum refinery at
Jamnagar is his brainchild. He was also the in-charge of
Dhirubhai's dream project Reliance Infocomm. But after
the split in the Reliance Empire, Reliance Infocomm went
to his brother Anil.
Mukesh Ambani is now planning to enter retail sector in
a big way and will launch a chain of 'Reliance Fresh'
retail stores. He also entered into an agreement with the
Haryana government to establish a Special Economic
Zone with an investment running into billions of rupees.
He has a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from
University of Bombay and a master's in Business
Administration from Stanford University, USA.
The fourth richest Indian today, with a net worth of
about $13.5 billion, Anil Ambani is chairman of Reliance
Communications, Reliance Capital, Reliance Energy and ANIL D AMBANI
Reliance Natural Resources Limited. Before the Reliance
empire split, he was vice chairman and managing
director of Reliance Industries Limited. The Reliance
group was founded by his late father Dhirubhai
Ambani.
Anil was born on June 4, 1959. He joined Reliance in 1983,
two years after his elder brother Mukesh, as co-chief
executive officer. He is credited with leading India's
foray into overseas capital markets with international
public offerings of global depositary receipts,
convertibles and bonds. He also directed RIL's efforts to
raise $2 billion from global markets.
Anil was elected as an independent Member of the
Rajya Sabha with the support of the Samajwadi Party,
but resigned on March 25, 2006.
Ambani who was once ridiculed for being overweight at
a shareholder's meeting is now a fitness freak and runs
the Mumbai marathon regularly.
He has a bachelor's degree in Science from the
University of Bombay and a master's in Business
Administration from The Wharton School at the
University of Pennsylvania.
He is married to former Bollywood actress Tina Munim.
Sunil B Mittal is chairman and managing director of Bharti
group. Bharti is India's largest GSM-based mobile phone
service. Son of a politician, he built his Bharti group, along
SUNIL B MITTAL
with two siblings, into India's largest mobile phone
operator in just ten years. Vodafone and SingTel both own
stakes in recently renamed flagship Bharti Airtel. The group
also has partnerships with Axa for insurance and with the
Rothschild family for exporting fruits and vegetables. He
plans to go into retailing along with the world's largest
retailer Wal-Mart.
The 49-year-old has always been a pioneer. A first
generation entrepreneur, he started his first business in 1976
with a capital investment of Rs 20,000. He decided not to be
a politician and set up a small bicycle business in Ludhiana.
By 1979, Sunil Mittal realised that his ambitions could not be
fulfilled in Ludhiana, so he moved out to Mumbai. He
initially founded a number of trading concerns, and
established the first company to manufacture push button
telephones in India.
In 1982, Mittal started a full-fledged business selling
portable generators imported from Japan. He was one of
the first entrepreneurs to identify the mobile telecom
business as a major growth area and launched services in
Delhi in 1995. Under his leadership the company has gone
from strength to strength.
Kundapur Vaman Kamath is the managing
director and CEO of ICICI Bank, the largest
private bank in India. Kamath, born on
K V KAMATH
December 2, 1947, began his career with ICICI --
the parent body of ICICI Bank -- in 1971 and has
since then worked to take ICICI places. He has
helped the financial institution evolve into a
modern, tech-savvy organisation.
He joined the project finance division of ICICI in
1971 and moved on to different departments to
gather rich experience. In 1988, he joined the
Asian Development Bank, Manila in their private
sector department. He worked in most of the
developing countries in the region including
China, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and
Vietnam. In May 1996, he returned to ICICI as its
managing director and chief executive officer.
He is a graduate of the Indian Institute of
Management, Ahmedabad.