After building the Essar group with his brother Ravi, Shashi Ruia now plans to focus on setting up public welfare institutes like the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and the cancer institute set up by the Birla Group. As a guest speaker in Confluence 2007, which is Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A)'s annual business school meet, Ruia said that his children's involvement in the business had allowed him more free time to think of setting up public welfare facilities. In a free-wheeling talk about his early days and the creation of the Essar Group, Ruia said that before 1990s, laws like the Indian policy resolution, FERA, MRTP and port laws were some among the plethora of 'conning' laws which meant that no one other than the government could put up their businesses. Paying tribute to Bill Gates, Dhirubhai Ambani and Ratan Tata for creating opportunities in spite of problems faced, Ruia showered praise on new age entrepreneurs like Dheeraj Gupta of Jumbo King Vada Pav and former IIM-A alumnus Sharath Babu who declined a big corporate offer to start his own food company. Speaking on the present business scenario, Ruia put to rest the debate between India and China by saying that China is way ahead in terms of manufacturing and consumption in oil, cement, automobiles among others and have managed to bring quality as well. "Quality and size of manufacturing shows me what we will have to achieve in terms of capacity to compete with China," said Ruia. He added that the challenge India faced was to train 12 million new entrants into the job field every year. His message to students at the Confluence was to follow the fervour of entrepreneurship. He admitted that he did not possess any management degree but he was an MBB which stands for 'Marwari By Birth'.
