India's Most Celebrated Entrepreneur!

India too has its share of rags to riches heroes. And Dhirubhai Ambani is one of the best known among them. This founder of Reliance Industries was one of the three sons of Hirachandbhai, a school teacher, and Jamanaben. He also had two sisters. An anecdote from his childhood is that he once bought a tin of groundnut oil on credit from a local wholesaler and sold the oil in retail on the roadside. He earned a few rupees as profit from this transaction. Apparently, during weekends when his school was closed, he used to set up bhajia stalls at village fairs to make ends meet at home.

According to R-ADAG, when he was 17, he went to Aden (now Yemen) in search of opportunity, and worked as a dispatch clerk for A. Besse. That was in 1949. A couple of years later, the company became a distributor for Shell products and Dhirubhai was promoted to manage the company’s oil-filling station at the port of Aden. It was here that he dreamed of setting up and owning a refinery, which he later realized with his petrochemicals venture. After returning to India, he started his first textile mill in Ahmednagar. Though his businesses were a huge success, there were also issues regarding Ambani’s control over stock exchange. His detractors accused him of illegal or unethical transactions and acts but an investigation by the RBI did not find any evidence of it. By 2007, the combined fortune of the Ambani family stood at $60 billion, making Ambani’s the second richest family in the world.

(taken from yourstory.com)

“You have to act and act now.” – Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle

Larry Ellison was born in New York City to an unwed Jewish mother. His father was an Italian American US Air Force pilot. According to Wikipedia, Ellison contracted pneumonia when he was  nine months old and his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption. His adoptive mother was warm and loving, while his adoptive father was unsupportive and distant.

He was a bright but inattentive student. He left the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after his second year without taking his final exams because his adoptive mother had just died. Later, he attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he first encountered computer design. In 1966, aged 22, he moved to northern California.

In 1977, he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) with two partners and an investment of $2,000. In 1982, the company became Oracle Systems Corporation after its flagship product, the Oracle database. Currently, Ellison owns stakes in Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Quark Biotechnology Inc. and Astex Pharmaceuticals. In September 2011, Ellison was listed on the Forbes List of Billionaires as the fifth richest man in the world. Ellison is still the third richest American, with a net worth of about $36.5 billion.

(taken from yourstory.com)

Jeff Bezos' 2 Pizza Rule

Jeff Bexos is one of the most legendary entrepreneurs and Founder/CEO of Amazon. He has been known to have and follow his own set of beliefs and has created the world's largest online retailer.

One rule he believes in is the '2 Pizza Rule'. He believes that a meeting should not be attended by people who can eat more than 2 pizzas, i.e. ideally a meeting should be attended by less than around 8 people. He believes that when the meeting has more people attending, the flow of communication gets inhibited. In large groups, the attendees cannot express themselves clearly and creative thinking and discussion gets limited. Large groups lead to group consensus taking priority over individual ideas and viewpoints, which in turn hampers the productivity of the meeting.