India too has its share of rags to riches heroes. And Dhirubhai Ambani is one of the best knowm among them.
This founder of Reliance Industries was one of the three sons of Hirachandbhai, a school teacher, and Jamanaben. He also had two sisters.
An anecdote from his childhood is that he once bought a tin of groundnut oil on credit from a local wholesaler and sold the oil in retail on the roadside.
He earned a few rupees as profit from this transaction. Apparently, during weekends when his school was closed, he used to set up bhajia stalls at village fairs to make ends meet at home.
According to R-ADAG, when he was 17, he went to Aden (now Yemen) in search of opportunity, and worked as a dispatch clerk for A. Besse. That was in 1949.
A couple of years later, the company became a distributor for Shell products and Dhirubhai was promoted to manage the company's oil-filling station at the port of Aden.
It was here that he dreamed of setting up and owning a refinery, which he later realized with his petrochemicals venture. After returning to India, he started his first textile mill in Ahmednagar. Though his businesses were a huge success, there were also issues regarding Ambani's control over stock exchange.
His detractors accused him of illegal or unethical transactions and acts but an investigation by the RBI did not find any evidence of it. By 2007, the combined fortune of the Ambani family stood at $60 billion, making Ambani’s the second richest family in the world.
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