Anil Agarwal, an Indian entrepreneur born in 1954 is tBusiness Entrepreneurshe founder-director, executive chairman and majority stakeholder of the $10 billion conglomerate Vedanta Resources corporation, a UK-based firm, which owns mining and metal resources. He is from an ordinary family and his father was a fabricator of grills and gates in small-town Patna in 1960s. It is very inspiring to see a person leaving school at 15 without knowing a word of English and rise to great heights. He is the eleventh-richest Indian(2006), with a personal fortune of US$4.5 billion. As of 6th October 2007, his net worth was estimated at $12.7 billion, making him the 6th richest Indian.Vedanta Resources was the only Indian group to go for a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2003 and its subsidiary, Sterlite Industries, was listed on NYSE in 2007 in the largest IPO in the US by an Indian company.

Initially, Anil Agarwal started as a small time scrap metal trading business in Mumbai. In the 1980s he believed enough in the telecommunication industry to create a major demand for copper wires. His vision and foresight were right! In 1983 he managed well to buy a closed down copper cable manufacturing plant in U.S for US $ 2 million and he invested $1.5 million bank loan for its development. The new company that he formed Sterlite Industries grew very well.

  • Successful EntrepreneursVedanta Resources Plc agreed to buy Mitsui & Co.’s entire stake in Indian iron-ore exporter Sesa Goa Ltd. for $981 million, beating rivals including Arcelor Mittal to secure supplies of the steel-making raw material.
  • Anil Agarwal is a great fan of Lalu Prasad as he studied in the same school (Miller High School ) where Lalu studied.
  • Anils’s career started in a room at Kalbadevi where not more than three people could sit and with a telephone which was rented from another office upstairs.
  • Today, Anil Agarwal owns a $20 million home at Mayfair in central London.
  • Agarwal who set up the 10,000-acre Vedanta University in Orissa, has dedicated it to his father Dwaraka Prasad Agarwal.

Agarwal is a simple but resolute spiritual person who achieved much due to perseverance and hard work.

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