Business Maharajas by Gita Piramal

Business Maharajas by Gita Piramal is the inside story of India’s most powerful business tycoons who exercise substantial power over the Indian economy.

Summary Of The Book

Business Maharajas is an engrossing inside story of eight business tycoons who have been described as the most powerful in all of Asia. With a combined turnover of more than INR 55,000 crore, Piramal’s selection is bang on target. The author has picked the best talent from among the big family businesses.

Business Maharajas profiles noted business tycoons like Rahul Bajaj, Brij Mohan Khaitan, Dhirubhai Ambani, Ratan Tata, R. P. Goenka, Bharat and Vijay Shah and Aditya Birla. Piramal has presented the lives of these business giants in detail along with an overview of their business tactics. There are various details and incidents which are woven together from different newspaper reports and publications. Gita Piramal has peppered the book with interesting anecdotes and personal accounts.

Business Maharajas attempts to present a series of highly prominent yet critical episodes which are illustrative in the context of the high profile careers of these men. There are little quotes and details which give the book a popular touch. These include Ramnath Goenka and Dhirubhai Ambani’s rivalry and their truce, the kidnapping of Bharat Shah’s son-in-law’s twin and payment of a million US dollars as ransom and Nusli Wadia’s presence at the wedding of a daughter of the Ambani family.

Various important quotes and beliefs of these powerful industrialists are mentioned in this book. Gita Piramal’s book reveals how all these men took radically different routes to success amidst certain startlingly common disparities. She also highlights how each of these men had crucial mentorship and luck at some point of their lives which propelled them upwards.

About Gita Piramal

Gita Piramal is a renowned business historian, author, freelance writer, media personality and ex-director of BP Ergo and VIP Industries Limited. Gita Piramal has also written Business Legends, Business Mantras, India’s Industrialists, Vol. 1, Smart Leadership, Managing Radical Change, Sumantra Ghoshal on Management: A Force for Good and World Class in India.

Gita Piramal has a Master’s degree in History along with a Business History PhD from Bombay University. She has received awards like the Business Today Award and Scholar of the Year 2004 Award from Ness Wadia College in Pune. The Delhi Management Association has also listed two of her books as the best in the management section. Gita Piramal has worked with The Financial Times as its Bombay Correspondent and also with the Indian School of Business as the Associate Dean of ISB Interactive. She was featured in the list of twenty five most powerful Women in Indian business in 2004. She has written for The Economic Times and is also a consulting editor at the World Executive’s Digest. She has made business programmes for Plus Channel and BBC and been a member of the LBS Regional Advisory Board. She is presently the managing editor of The Smart Manager magazine. She married Dilip Piramal, chairman of VIP Industries Limited in 1979 and divorced him in 2005.