“I had no choice but to grow up fast…

KUMAR MANGALAM BIRLA,53

As chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, he has transformed the conglomerate from a $2 billion business into a multinational behemoth spanning 36 countries and businesses as diverse as textiles, cement, chemicals, retail and telecom with an annual revenue of $46 billion

Kumar Mangalam still vividly recalls the day his father, Aditya Vikram Birla, told him he had only a few more months to live. At first, the young Kumar Mangalam (he was 28 at this point) refused to believe him. After all, at 51 years of age, Aditya Vikram was at the prime of his life. He had successfully diversified the business group he had inherited into textiles, petrochemicals and telecommunications and was among the first Indian corporates to go international, taking the worth of the conglomerate to $2 billion in 1995.