Ambanis’ Team A

RELIANCE patriarch Dhirubhai Ambani was not known as a betting man. But he was a born gambler: His highest stakes were placed on people. ‘‘I bet on people,’’ he would often say. And Reliance’s Rs 60,000-crore turnover and Fortune 500 listing proved during his lifetime that his instincts were rarely wrong.

His strategy was easy: Pick the best talent in the world and give them compensation packages India Inc had never heard of. His dream team was drawn from top bureaucrats, technicians, finance managers and, of course, family members.

In all, Reliance employs 35,000 employees of 22 nationalities. And to them, Dhirubhai attributed the group’s impressive benchmarks: manufacturing a full three per cent of India’s gross domestic product, accounting for five per cent of India’s exports, contributing 10 per cent of the government’s indirect tax revenues, commanding 15 per cent of the weightage on the Sensex, making 30 per cent of the total profits of all private companies in India put together.

Says Mukesh Ambani, vice-chairman of Reliance Industries: ‘‘Our edge is our people. What we as management have done consciously is to collect people who dare. And give them room to dream in. As a result, at Reliance, growth is life!’’

Even as he made inroads into new businesses — power, telecom, bio-tech, oil and gas and insurance — Ambani Sr formed his Team A after studying backgrounds, education, value-addition capabilities and, more than anything else, ambition. He hired the top CEOs from public sector units he would later bid for under the disinvestment plan, while simultaneously honing an young in-house team (average age: 39). Today, RIL alone has over 4,000 qualified professionals: 3,436 engineers, 340 engineer-MBAs, 155 CA/ICWA and 55 PhDs. They comprise more than 80 per cent of the company’s 5,000-plus supervisory workforce, and draw the highest salaries in Corporate India.

All of which adds up to an employee turnover of just 3.26 per cent.

Says V V Bhat, group president, management services: ‘‘My brief is simple. Recruit the right people, assimilate their cultures into the Reliance culture, make them feel proud, remove hierarchical mental blocks, keep people motivated and move ahead. People have designations. But at the end of the day, the designations are irrelevant. It is the contribution made by each individual that defines his role.’’

In the last two decades, the A-team has created assets of over Rs 50,000 crore, with a market capitalisation of over Rs 60,000 crore. More than 100 key people report directly to the Ambanis; they are the ones who prompted Dhirubhai to often say, ‘‘Tomorrow the Ambanis may not be there but Reliance Industries will remain forever due to my people.’’

These, then, are His People:

The Acquisitor

NIKHIL R MESWANI: Dhi-rubhai’s 36-year-old nephew is one of the key men in the Ambanis’ A Team. An executive director, he played a vital role in Reliance’s acquisition of IPCL and signed the deal with the government. It was also one of the rare occasions when the low-profile Meswani came into the limelight.

One of Dhirubhai’s closest allies, Meswani has been working with the group ever since he graduated in Chemical Engineering from Mumbai University. He is on the board of all Reliance companies and Reliance’s nominee director in the IPCL board. Meswani is on the core management and finance committees at Reliance; he signs Reliance Petroleum accounts with cousin Anil Ambani.

LAST WORD: Watch out for Meswani in the post-Dhirubhai era.

The Hands-On Man

Hital R Meswani: Nik-hil’s younger brother, the 33-year-old Hital has been a director at Reliance since October, 1997. He studied chemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and business management at the Wharton Business School.

During the construction of the Rs 25,000-crore Jamnagar project, Hital was posted at the site for months together, keeping in hourly touch with Reliance headquarters on a satellite phone. Subsequently, he was inducted into the board of Reliance Petroleum; he also looks after RIL plants, besides being associated with the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Young Entrepreneurs’ Association as the Reliance man.

LAST WORD: A bigger role in the Reliance empire is in the offing.

The Money Manager

Alok agarwal: A Bank of America veteran, Agarwal is the finance man. Now group treasurer, Agarwal has raised funds from all over the world to finance the world’s biggest oil refinery at Jamnagar. He even helped launch India’s first 100-year Yankee bond, which means the money has been raised for the next generation of Reliance managers too. ‘‘The finance department boys sleep with a credit-rating and a prospectus under their pillows. If ever there is a need to raise finance from within India or from the global markets, they can do it literally in the time it takes to pick up the phone and say ‘hello’,’’ says Agarwal.

LAST WORD: The markets may have held steady after Dhirubhai’s death, but Agarwal continues to be among the Ambanis’ most important men.

The Insider

K G Ramanathan: A former IAS officer and IPCL chairman, he quit the PSU to join the unlisted Reliance Power in 2000 as a director to help the group bid for IPCL. It was he, say insiders, who encouraged the Ambanis to bid Rs 1,490 crore for IPCL, against Indian Oil’s bid of just Rs 826 crore. As a reward, Ramanathan was inducted into the IPCL board of which Mukesh Ambani is the chairman.

LAST WORD: His new brief is to generate 10,000 MW of power for Reliance in 10 years. He will also look after acquisitions of various power projects.

The Futurist

B D Khurana: A 30-year veteran of the telecom industry, Khurana is vice-chairman of RIL Infocom. This IIT, Delhi, alumnus has one brief: to chart the group’s Rs 25,000 crore foray into the infocom business, including basic telephone services, cellular phones, international long distance telephony and data and value-added services. After the Jamnagar project, Reliance Infocom is the next big business for the Ambanis.

LAST WORD: Alongwith Akhil Gupta and Prakash Bajpai, former CEO of Hughes Tele.com, Khurana is responsible for the optic fibre-networking of the entire country over the next three years.

The Smooth Operator

R K Narang: Former chairman of Indian Oil Corporation, Narang runs the world’s biggest 27mn tpa oil refinery at Jamnagar for Reliance. A mechanical engineer by education, Narang was chosen for the key post because of his wide-ranging contacts in the oil industry, which helped the Ambanis to tie up some crucial agreements with the IOC. Officially, he is wholetime director and additional director of the company, besides also being on the board of the Container Corporation of India, and handling the marketing for Reliance Petroleum.

LAST WORD: Narang is playing a major role in the merger of Reliance Industries with Reliance Petroleum.