“FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM,” goes the Lord’s Prayer, “the power, and the glory, forever and ever.” Let’s take one fragment first: the power and the glory. That’s one possible measure of an individual’s accomplishments in life, but it only traces the outer circumference of what is essentially an inner journey. The 50 people on our High & Mighty List were not born on another planet. Nor were those on the three supplementary lists on politics, the officialdom and Indians who made it big abroad. They are ordinary mortals, and yet extraordinary. Their little and big kingdoms were built out of each one’s special blend of savvy, will, imagination, tenacity…and sometimes the sheer force of personality. Some of them came out of anonymity to be where they are. Monika Shergill, content head of Netflix, grew up watching B&W television in Meerut. Nithin and Nikhil Kamath of Zerodha are a bank employee’s kids, regulation Bengaluru middle class. Narendra Modi’s past is legend. Even Mukesh Ambani has seen life in a Mumbai chawl and Kumar Mangalam Birla had no choice but to grow up fast after his father’s untimely demise. Both Mukesh and Kumar Mangalam grew their inherited businesses manifold. Each individual journey starts from scratch. In Rahul’s case, it began with the Bharat Jodo Yatra last year. Fortune traces a tenuous path between flux and certitude. A Gautam Adani got to be the second-richest individual in the world, but his sternest challenge came after that. Even billionaires must expect the unexpected. Under skies lately darkened by war and pestilence, “forever and ever” is straight out fantasy. But this is the Powernama of the Present.
1 BLAZING FORCE
BECAUSE he is a visionary who plays the big game and excels at it. His net worth of $87.9 billion (Rs 7.2 lakh crore) makes him Asia’s richest per son in Forbes’s reckoning. His canny helmsman ship of India’s largest private enterprise allows him to retain his august perch as the biggest daddy of them all. That eye-popping m-cap of Rs 16.7 lakh crore (May 16) and revenues of Rs 9.7 lakh crore (FY23) aren’t a fluke. His taxes alone total Rs 1.9 lakh crore
BECAUSE he is India’s biggest retailer, with Reliance Retail counting 65.6 mn sq. ft of retail space across 18,000-plus outlets, and some 250 mn registered, and happy, customers. Its gross revenue of Rs 2.6 lakh crore is a bonus
BECAUSE Reliance Jio, launched in 2016, trumps geography and class barriers like nothing else. If it swept hitherto-untouched swathes of rural India as it attained numero uno status (with 439.3 mn+ subscribers), its 5G footprint will go pan-India by the end of this year
BECAUSE OTT app JioCinema recorded a whopping 1.5 bn views on the opening weekend of Indian Premier League 2023. Net work18 remains one of India’s largest media firms (revenues: Rs 7,266 crore). And Jio Financial Services is making a bold solo sortie on the bourses
WELL-INFORMED He taps into an international brains trust and is up to date with new technologies and global developments
BECAUSE Reliance has committed Rs 75,000 crore to green solutions. Targets: 20GW captive consumption of solar energy by 2025, net carbon neutrality by 2035. Fully integrated gigafactories at Jamnagar will churn out the goodies—panels, storage systems, electrolysers and fuel cells
2 THE EMPIRE BUILDER
BECAUSE in his cool, unflappable manner, Birla plays a long game. No wonder, his group’s turnover catapulted to nearly Rs 5 lakh crore last year, making it one of India’s largest conglomerates
BECAUSE he continues to take India to the world. His metals business announced a $2.5 bn (or Rs 20,706 crore) investment in a greenfield aluminium rolling and recycling plant in Alabama, US, the biggest such by an Indian business group in the US
BECAUSE his cement flagship UltraTech created history when its sales volumes topped 100 million tonnes (mt) in FY23, greater than the next three companies (Ambuja, ACC and Shree) combined
PREPARING GEN-NEXT Birla has now formally inducted his children, Ananya and Aryaman, into the group, making them the fifth generation of entrepreneurs in the iconic family
TOP HONOUR Was conferred the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour, in March, becoming the fourth member of the Birla family to receive the Padma Award
BECAUSE his fashion business will soon have a portfolio of the best Indian ethnic brands—Sabyasachi, Tarun Tahiliani, Shantnu & Nikhil, Masaba, Jaypore, Tasva, W, Aurelia, the last two with the acquisition of TCNS Clothing
BECAUSE if the BITS School of Management in 2021 enhanced the old tech-ed brand’s scope, this year, it gave India a legal nursery with BITS Law School, Mumbai
BECAUSE he set up a £15 million scholarship programme at the London Business School in memory of his grandfather B.K. Birla—the largest endowed scholarship gift to a European business school
BECAUSE he has set up the Aditya Birla Centre for Community Initiatives & Rural Development to implement programmes for rural upliftment
3 Eminence Grise
BECAUSE as head of Tata Trusts, the philanthropic arm that holds 66 per cent share in Tata Sons, he remains the most venerated figure in the pantheon of Indian industrialists. He has a key role in the appointment of the chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group
BECAUSE Tata Trusts has developed and augmented 10 cancer care facilities across the country—in Assam, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The trusts’ dis tributed cancer control model makes world-class treatment accessible and affordable for people
LIT LIST The Parag Initiative, run by Tata Trusts, helms an effort to revivify the culture of reading, curating quality literature for children in English and Hindi and compiling them into guides for teachers, librarians and parents. Its 2023 Honours List, the third edition, received submissions of original fiction, non-fiction and poetry from 33 publishing houses
NE’ER TOO OLD Age is no bar for Tata to learn the piano or post retro Insta pix
PET PUJA A self-proclaimed dog lover, he missed receiving a lifetime achievement award from (then) Prince Charles in 2018 at Buckingham Palace because one of his two pet dogs was ill
Tata Trusts supported the publication of the India Justice Report 2022—its third edition—this April. India’s only ranking of states, initiated in 2019, on justice delivery, the IJR has tracked and brought to the national discourse how states are performing
