a
s he strides across
the living room of
his residence in
South Mumbai, Anil
Agarwal looks into
the distance where
leafy greens give way to sweeping
views of the Arabian Sea. “It is often
said that what you take from the
Ganga, you must return to the Ganga,”
says the billionaire boss of Vedanta
Resources. Dressed in a sober blue
suit and rectangular-framed glasses,
Agarwal is a towering
figure in India Inc. Not
just because he’s almost
six feet tall, but also
because the self-made
industrialist’s London-
listed natural resources
conglomerate, which
turned over $11.5 billion
last fiscal, is the sixth
biggest in the world
(by Ebitda). And with a
personal fortune of $3.2
billion he is ranked 44 on
the 2017 Forbes India Rich
List. (Up from rank 63 and
$1.86 billion last year.)
Yet the description of
a billionaire disappoints
him. “I have pledged
most of my wealth.
Where are the billions?”
he says referring to his
promise to give away 75
percent of his fortune to
philanthropy—a decision
he took with his family
in 2014. In fact, even
getting this interview with
him was difficult. Time
constraints aside, Agarwal
is disconcerted about being profiled
among India’s richest, as this issue of
Forbes India sets out to do. “Money is
important. It gives you confidence. But
I never came from that background,
so it makes me uncomfortable,”
says Agarwal, whose shaven head
and light grey stubble lend him a
more rough-and-tumble look.
In his early years growing upin the constricted bylanes of Goria
Toli in Patna, Bihar, life was hard,
recollects Agarwal. He schooled till
the age of 14, barely learning a word
of English, and dabbled in his father’s
aluminium conductor business.
When his ambitions outgrew what
Patna could offer, Agarwal, aged 19,
journeyed to (then) Bombay to make
it as a scrap metal dealer. That was
in the mid-1970s. “At that time my
only purpose was to make money, to
succeed,” confesses the 64-year-old
in still patchy English,
despite having lived in
London for 19 years.
Today, having grown
Vedanta Resources
into a global giant
with operations in
aluminium, zinc,
lead, silver, power,
copper, iron ore and
oil and gas crossing
four continents and a
market capitalisation
of around $3.1 billion,
Agarwal’s ambitions
have changed. The
founder, chairman
and, with his family,
owner of a 69 percent
stake in the company,
still wants to grow
Vedanta and has long
talked of turning it into
the next BHP or Rio
Tinto. But through that
growth he wants to give
back. By developing
India’s natural
resources sector, he
believes, jobs will be
created and poverty
eradicated. “India needs many more
companies like ours,” he says. In turn,
Vedanta’s growth fuels Agarwal’s
philanthropic ambitions. He recalls
a time about ten years ago when his
late grandfather took an oath from
him. “He wanted me to pledge 90
percent of my wealth. I negotiated
and we settled on 75 percent,” he
says, chuckling infectiously.F
rom the outset when Agarwal
worked as a scrap metal trader
in Kalbadevi—the heart of
Mumbai’s metal market at the time—
Rasiklal Shah, an established metal
merchant, recalls the young Agarwal’s
fiery grit. “He was very clever and
always set his sights on the big
picture,” the retired 89-year-old says
in Gujarati. Back then Agarwal worked
out of Rasikbhai’s compact office using
a small desk and a shared telephone
line. He would collect scrap metal
from cable companies and sell it to
other traders, including Rasikbhai who
became his trusted business partner.
When the chance to buy Samsher
Sterling, an ailing Mumbai-based cable
making company, came up in 1979,
Agarwal jumped at it. He didn’t have
the money for it, but no opportunity
was too outlandish to pursue. He
recounts sitting at a local bank for
days until the bankers relented and
gave him the money he needed. “After
he bought the factory, there was
no looking back,” says Rasikbhai.
And so it was. Agarwal ran Samsher
Sterling for several years, but those
were difficult days. “I learnt how
to deal with unions, banks, people,
customers, machinery, and crises.
When you struggle, you learn a lot,”
he says. He realised that in order to
grow the business, he would have to
look at backward integration. Since
copper and aluminium were needed
to make cables, Agarwal decided to set
up a copper smelter—India’s first—in
Tamil Nadu. In 1988, he floated his
company—what came to be known as
Sterlite Industries, named after one
of Samsher Sterling’s popular cable
brands—and a series of acquisitions
followed. In 1995, he acquired Madras
Aluminium Company, or Malco,
setting foot in the aluminium business,
and further expanded his copper
business by snapping up mining
assets in Australia in 1999. “I wanted
to keep growing,” shrugs Agarwal.
At the turn of the millennium
when the government was looking to
privatise its loss-making mining assets,52 | forbes india december 29, 2017Anil AgArwAl
f ounder and chairman,
Vedanta Resources
Age: 64
r ank in the
r ch i list
n et worth: $3.2 billion
Significant Business
Development last Year:
Agarwal completed the
merger of cash-rich oil
producer cairn india
into parent Vedanta
limited in April. this
has helped Vedanta
Resources pare its debt
and improve profit-
ability. Agarwal also
upped his stake in Anglo
American from 12.4%
to 20% in september
to become the miner’s
largest shareholder
The way Forward:
Agarwal wants to trans-
form Vedanta Resources
into a global natural
resources giant rivalling
the likes of Bhp and Rio
tinto. he plans to invest
$10 billion over the next
3-4 years to further ex-
pand Vedanta’s verticalsat a glance44Richest
10 0 Ind Ians
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