Mukesh Ambani to write the Reliance story

He is known as a man of few words as much as for his execution skills of mammoth projects, but industrialist Mukesh Ambani will now put his thoughts and business philosophy into words in a new avatar as a writer.

The book, expected to hit the shelves early next fiscal, would be the first by Ambani and is likely to be published by global publishing major Penguin, sources in the know said.

Incidentally, Ambani, Chairman of the country's most valued corporate house Reliance Industries, was ranked on Thursday as the richest Indian for the third year in a row by business magazine Forbes.

An RIL spokesperson did not offer any comments and queries sent to Penguin India were unanswered.

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Sources, however, said that the book would dwell upon the growth chart of polyster-to-petrochemicals-retail major RIL group as also the business philosophy of the biggest corporate house of the country, as seen by its chairman.

Ambani, whose networth has been pegged at $27 billion by Forbes, could also give some insights into how Reliance group grew into the country's biggest entity, but might not dwell into the personal space of one of the most talked-about Indian business family.

In 2007, on her 75th birthday, Ambani family matriarch Kokilaben brought out a pictorial biography on the life of her husband Late Dhirubhai Ambani.

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Books on Reliance group has always sparked intense interest in the corporate circles, but so far there have not been any authorised published piece.

Way back in 1998, the undivided Reliance had to move court to stop the publication of The Polyster Prince: The Rise of Dhirubhai Ambani in the country.

However, a new book by the same author, Hamish McDonald, Ambani & Sons' was released in New Delhi this month.

None of the two works were authorised by the Ambanis.

Writing about Mukesh, Forbes India magazine said that he ended a long-running feud with younger sibling Anil in May and scrapped their non-compete pact.

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"Jumped into telecom, paying $1 billion for wireless broadband firm Infotel. His Reliance Industries, India's most valuable company, is investing in shale gas assets," it added.

Mukesh, elder son of Dhirubhai, joined the group in 1981.

A chemical engineer from University of Mumbai and MBA from Stanford University, USA, he initiated Reliance's backward integration journey from textiles into polyester fibres and further into petrochemicals, petroleum refining and going up-stream into oil and gas exploration and production.

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He created several new world class manufacturing facilities involving diverse technologies that have raised Reliance's petrochemicals manufacturing capacities from less than a million tonnes to about twenty million tonnes per year.

Mukesh led and worked hands-on for creation of the world's largest grassroots petroleum refinery at Jamnagar. This was followed by setting up of another 27 million tonnes refinery next to the existing one, thus transforming Jamnagar as the 'refining hub of the world'.