Dhirubhai Ambani Biography: Dhirubhai Ambani is a name that has been known to the majority of the people in India. Here in this article, we will present the biography of a prominent figure in India. This will include his basic details such as his real name, date of birth, birthplace, business, education, and family. It is important for the coming generations to know about his struggle. More importantly, people only talk about how successful a businessman was he, talked about his wealth but here this article will provide a piece of detailed information about this businessman who succeeded despite facing failures in his life. Dhirubhai Ambani.
As we all know this man by the name Dhirubhai Ambani but most people will be somehow a little astonished to know that his real name was Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani.
Basic Information Regarding Dhirubhai Ambani
As we have already mentioned above that the real name of Dhirubhai Ambani was Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani. It was only after his success in the business market that he was known by the name of Dhirubhai Ambani. He started his journey with a humble background and broke many shackles due to his intelligence and innovation. Due to his business ideas and efforts, he took India to another level. He was a business tycoon due to his sense of doing business and especially the power he possessed in the market at that time. He was the founder of Reliance Industries and also had many other business ventures.
Dhirubhai Ambani was born on the 28th of December in the year 1932. He was born in undivided India in Chorwad Junagadh State. In the British Era, this was under the Western India States Agency. If we talk about the present location, it is called the state of Gujarat. He was known as the founder of Reliance Industries and under his leadership, only many other branches opened under this firm. He died on the 6th of July in the year,2002. After his death in the year 2016, the government of India presented him with one of the most highly decorated awards “Padma Vibhushan” posthumously.
Early Days of Dhirubhai Ambani’s Life and Family
In the initial days of his life, he took his primary education from the school named Bahadur Khanji School and in his school days only he started to exhibit some leadership qualities. One such incident which exhibits his leadership qualities has been narrated here when the nawab of their state planned to join Pakistan after the independence. Then our young Dhirubhai Ambani started a protest against this proposal of the Junagarh Nawab.
Dhirubhai’s father’s name was Gordhanbhai Ambani and his mother’s name was Jamnaben Ambani. His father was from Modh Baniya Community and was a teacher by profession. Overall, his parents had three sons and one daughter. The name of his brothers was Ramaniklal Ambani and Saurabh Patel and name of his sister was Trilochana Ben. His family was from a decent background.
Dhirubhai Ambani Career Abroad
In the year 1948, Dhirubhai was just 16 years of age and decided to work in a company abroad. He went to Yemen and started working there in a firm with his brother. He was working there as a clerk and the company in which they were working was amongst the best and even the largest trading company in Egypt in the year 1950. Furthermore, as he was working there as a clerk, simultaneously he improved his trading and accounting skills also. In addition to this, his sense of doing business was also visible in the initial years of his career.
He was clearly ambitious and wanted to become wealthy by not any shortcut but only by sheer hard work. During that period, there was a firm called ‘Silver bullion”.This company was a famous one and used to sell metal in bulk. Exhibiting his innovative qualities, he thought of selling the silver by melting it and claiming that it was silver in its purest form and selling them at a large sum of money. As believed by many people, he was truly a financial expert.
Dhirubhai Ambani’s Wife and Children
As far as his character was concerned, his friend described him as a very generous person. Among many qualities, his quality of being friendly and cheerful was most appreciated. Dhirubhai also worked for Shell oil agents. In the year 1955, he was of the age 23. He married to Kokilaben as she was aged 21 at that time. She hailed from Jamnagar which is also located in Gujarat. As a husband also he was a supportive person as told by her wife. After two years in 1957, the Kokilaben gave birth to Mukesh Ambani in Aden. Later in the next immediate year that is in 1958, Dhirubhai and his family came back to India and hence settled in Mumbai. After shifting to India, their family grew and his wife gave birth to other siblings of Mukesh Ambani that were Anil Ambani and their two sisters known by the name Nina and Dipti Ambani.
Dhirubhai Ambani Business Development
Dhirubhai Ambani was the founder of Reliance Industries. But before reaching this milestone, he struggled a lot. Initially, he reached out to the national banks of India for funding and investment from the banks but the banks refused to provide any kind of assistance. If we talk about the business leaders who made an impact in the global industries then his name from India is always there. In simple words, he was the face of business from India internationally.
Initial Days of Business
Initially, he was refused finance and investments from major public sector banks in India. Therefore, he decided to make small investments and at first started a small business as a spice trader under the banner of Reliance Commercial Corporations. In the beginning, he was not focused on money instead he was focused on the quality of the spices which he was trading. He was trading jaggery, betel, sugar, nuts along with spices to the Gulf Emirates. As mentioned prior, he just focused on the volumes and the quality they are trading with low profits. As mentioned earlier in this article, he was an ambitious person, as he was not contented with his spices business and then planned and shifted to the business of Yarn trading. Additionally, as the profit was huge in this business therefore the risk was also greater in this case.
Growth in Business
He entered the yarn trading business and started as a small startup and then succeeded to make some bigger deals. In addition to this, one can estimate his success in the yarn trading industry by knowing that he was elected as the director of the association of Bombay Yarn Merchants. According to many experts, it was the yarn trading market that provided ample wealth to Dhirubhai Ambani. In this business, due to the insights that he gained from his past experiences, he cracked two deals that provided a major chunk of wealth to him. From here only he got the wealth to set up the upcoming firm of textiles to be named as Reliance Textiles in the future. And finally, he made his plan implemented and started to build a textile mill in Ahmedabad, Gujarat and to be more specific it was in the Naroda Region of Ahmedabad.
Business Establishment
As the textiles factory was under construction in Ahmedabad. He used to travel between Bombay and Ahmedabad every weekend. There he used to check the progress and the kinds of problems encountered by the workers. His target was to produce the finest quality of nylon in a short period of time along with a large number of quantities. He was also conscious of the safety of the workers in the factory. This was the level of dedication and passion, he was delivering at that time. During the period of construction, he was of the idea to construct the factory sooner. Therefore, as a result, he increased the labour force as he wanted the factory to be built under the deadline decided by him in till August end. At the same time during the construction of the factory, the value of the rupee also came down which impacted his project in terms of the economy. But as he was firm in his decisions, he continued with his project despite the risk.
At the end of August 1966, he was finished with the construction work of the factory. In addition to this, the types of equipment were also installed along with the major pieces of machinery. The construction work was finished within the stipulated time. In the year 1966 on the 1st of January, the factory started to work. He started the work with a mere staff of 35 men who were hired from Calcutta, Bombay and Indore. Initially, there was a problem in the conduct of business but later on, after some months in the year 1967, the factory started to deliver what it was made for. Now the struggle for him was not finished at all many buyers refrain to buy fabric from reliance as there were many big mills that was well established.
But as discussed earlier, he was not the one to accept defeat. Therefore, he came into the market by himself and started selling his fabric directly to retailers. And after some time, his fabric was in demand all over the market and demand was increasing with time. And we all know the name of his fabric, the name was “Vimal” and it became the selling fabric at that time. And in the year 1972, Reliance was a huge company and was growing at a very fast pace. At that time, even the world bank also received an award for excellence.
Business Expansion
In 1985, Dhirubhai Ambani changed the name of their company from Reliance Textiles Industries Limited to Reliance Industries Limited. After this, he also started a plant of Hazira Petrochemical in the surat region of Gujarat. This plant was set up in the year 1991 to 92. They also expanded the business in other fields such as petroleum refining, petrochemicals and many more. His younger son Anil Ambani also joined the business in 1983. Over the years their business grew in many fields.
Dhirubhai Ambani’s Death
He suffered a heart attack on the 24th of June and was later on admitted to the hospital. Later on, Dhirubhai Ambani died on the 6th of July 2002. Before this also he suffered a heart stroke in the year 1986. But prior to this in the year 1981, his son Mukesh Ambani also joined his father’s business and started learning the insights of the business
