Ambani vs Wadia: the Feedstock Fight

Dhirubhai Ambani was born into humble beginnings in a small Indian town in 1932. By 1980, the spice trader turned textile tycoon had built Reliance into one of India’s fastest-growing companies. His grip over the country's politics was, by then, one that few businessmen have matched before or since. We tell the story of Dhirubhai’s rise here.  

This might give you the impression that Dhirubhai’s path from that point was secure. It was not. Climbing to the highest echelons of power in a young India was one thing, but staying there — swatting away threats from friends, foes, and all that fell in between — would prove to be its own challenge. What follows is the tale of one such battle.

Dhirubhai’s first major rival was Nusli Wadia. Wadia’s family had long-owned the Bombay Dyeing & Manufacturing Co, one of Reliance’s competitors in the textile industry. Dhirubhai and Wadia may have worked in the same industry but they were chalk and cheese, right from their upbringing and status in society, down to their personalities. In an unauthorized biography of Dhirubhai, The Polyester Prince, author Hamish McDonald writes: 

Dhirubhai was a paan (betel nut) chewing trader roaming from client to client in Pydhonic to sell his polyester and nylon yarns, flashy in personal tastes, and with a small-town Gujarati social background. In Bombay, Nusli Wadia was Establishment.

Nusli Wadia was ‘Establishment’ because of social calibre. The Wadia family were Parsi elites, followers of the ancient Zoroastrian religion in Persia. They had historically been shipbuilders for the East India Company — which, in effect, began Britain’s century-long colonization of India — and followed in the Company’s wake to the coastal city of Bombay. As the years rolled on, the Wadia family eventually embraced India’s transition toward industrialisation. In 1879, they set up the Bombay Dyeing & Manufacturing Co, whose original function was dying cotton yarn, and by the 1970s, had become one of the country’s biggest textile manufacturers and exporters.

Nusli Wadia was twelve years younger than Dhirubhai, but he defied every stereotype of a wealthy young man. Ambani was full of pomp and circumstance, and did not shy from fame. Wadia, on the other hand, shunned the spotlight, avoided the press, and steered clear of the usual circuit of parties, business conferences, and sem ...

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