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Ambani's lack of higher education was no handicap: RIL investors

Dhirubhai Ambani always had one refrain on his lack of higher education. He did say: "May be if I had some education, my success and growth would have been quicker."

For once, his investors and admirers did not agree with the perception of Dhirubhai as most of them said: "If Dhirubhai had been an MBA alumni, he would have ended up as some top executive of a multinational and nothing beyond that. And then the loss would not have been to the Ambani family alone, but to other five million Indian families, who reposed faith in his company by investing their hard-earned money in it."

Majority of the shareholders believe that Dhirubhai's not having a formal higher education only made him to learn it the hard way from life, which he did it with promptitude. Dhirubhai's fertile mind then soaked up the lessons life had in store for him. One of them was, according to Dhirubhai, the ability to understand 'the need for doing the right thing at the right time.'

Another lesson Ambani learnt in his earlier years, which no other management school would have taught was 'not looking at life from any other angle but of how to earn' and make a success of what ever he did.

Says Udayan Bose, founder of Credit Capital, a merchant bank, "He's (Ambani) not in the old-fashioned mould and always joked that he belonged to the Zero Club because he started with nothing."

That way he had nothing to lose but everything to gain, in the face of mounting adversity. But then, only Ambani could turn adversity into an opportunity.

When banks turned him away for the much needed funds to build his factories, he was not cowed down but turned for support to the only other option he had the public.

Mobilising funds directly from small investors was a major departure from the normal practice of seeking from financial institutions like IDBI, ICICI and IFCI.

So much so, no major project in the 1970's and 80's could take off without the backing of these triumvirates of FIs.

Only Ambani departed from this practice and today his Reliance Group can take up any mega project without the assistance of FIs. Contrast Reliance Group's achievements with any other industrial group, it is only obvious that the comparison would be too odious to say the least.

UNI

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