The Great Ganesha

This month’s Portfolio magazine has a write-up on Mukesh Ambani, partial heir to Dhirubhai’s empire and India’s richest Indian (the world’s richest Indian being Lakshmi Mittal). Mukesh beats out his brother Anil by a scant $1.9 billion. So close!

The article discusses, amongst other things, Dhirubhai, the Reliance empire, oil refining and more. They spend an inordinate amount of space discussing Mukesh’s new $1 billion apartment building that’s coming up on Altamount Road. They even talk about the Bollywood film Guru which is loosely based on Dhirubhai’s life. The money quote comes from a Chevron VP, where he talks about the current state of affairs in Indian business:

Says Tom Simons, a vice president of Chevron, “There were the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts, huge companies that were family owned. That’s where India is now. It is a bit of a Wild West thing here, but they’ll get through it. I wish they’d build some roads, though.” [link]

That’s certainly a classic quote. Chevron is a minor investor (with options to increase their stake) in Mukesh’s plan to build what will eventually be the world’s biggest oil refinery in Gujarat.

And apropos of the last time I blogged about the Western media and Bombay, there’s a quote from Nita Ambani (Mukesh’s wife). Before I get there though, I’ll regurgitate that old quote from the NYT article just because it’s such a classic.

The ladies who lunch don’t speak of their philanthropic work to end the city’s abject poverty. “There are simply too many suffering,” one socialite explained. “So we focus on things we can actually have an impact on, like art and gardening.” [link]

I’m still not over that one. They don’t bother to do anything about the poverty because there’s too much of it. Jeez. And in case you’re wondering, the “ladies who lunch” are the soy-latte-drinking, soccer-mom equivalents of Bombay – the upper-middle class housewives. And here’s Nita Ambani cementing her position in there:

Ambani’s wife, Nita, who looks after Reliance’s corporate-responsibility program, explains that she and her husband make a special effort to keep their children grounded, citing the family’s trip to Washington. “Our daughter flew with us in the private plane, while our sons stayed behind in New York,” she says. After the other family members had left, the boys got lonely and wanted to join them. “We both decided not to send the plane back to get them. They took the train! We’re striving very hard to make them live a normal life.” [link]

No private plane, huh? Damn, that’s harsh! How did they manage? Do you think they reached safely? It’s going to keep me up nights, you know…

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