Anil Agarwal | Wheels of fortune

From the Patna lad who left school at 15 to founder, chairman and majority stakeholder of the $10 billion conglomerate Vedanta Resources, Agarwal has traveled a long way.

One of the most thrilling moments of my life was the day I got my first cycle,” reminisces Anil Agarwal, founder, chairman and, with his family, majority stakeholder of Vedanta Resources Plc., the London Stock Exchange-listed mining and metals conglomerate with a market cap of $10 billion (Rs39,400 crore).

The cycle was a gift from his father, a fabricator of grills and gates in small-town Patna in the 1960s. It meant the youngster could ride to his municipal school in style, instead of making the daily 10km hike on foot. Much later, Agarwal graduated to a Vespa scooter, but never made it to college.

His friend, Shishir Kumar and he often caught the overnight train from Patna to Varanasi, where they would take in two shows, back-to-back, of the latest Bollywood releases. Sipping hot milk from a matka at the station, they would then catch the train home.

A fellow cyclist and family friend, Kiran Gupta, became Agarwal’s bride when she was just 16 and he, 21. The couple still occasionally cycle in the summer sun in Hyde Park, just across from their London Mayfair residence.

Kumar went on to become chief diabetologist at Bombay Hospital, Mumbai. And Agarwal came to Mumbai as a scrap-metal dealer in 1976, going on to build an empire in copper, zinc, aluminium and iron ore, recently venturing into power generation.
These days, Agarwal travels by private plane, hopping from his mines in Zambia and Tasmania to Agra and Mathura. There he slips back with ease into a rickshaw with his old buddy Dr Kumar, for a darshan at the Krishna temple, riding through crowded lanes, savouring their favourite hot milk drink.

While Agarwal’s earlier cycling routine has morphed largely into a stationary cycle workout at the gym, holidays are different. Four winters ago, a group of old friends and the Agarwal clan cycled and camped outdoors over four days from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer, with a replay in Bhutan the following year. Ajay Anand, managing director, Faze Three, who was part of the group, says: “It’s such fun to get away together. The landscape may have changed, but at heart Anil is just the same.”

From the Patna lad who left school at 15 without knowing a word of English, to founder, Vedanta Resources, Agarwal has travelled a long way. 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.