Ruia to set up public welfare institutes

After establishing the Essar group, 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 at Confluence 2007, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A)'s annual meet, Ruia said sharing business responsibilities with his family leaves him with enough time to consider setting up of public welfare facilities.

Lauding Bill Gates, Dhirubhai Ambani and Ratan Tata for creating opportunities despite many problems, Ruia was all praise for new-age entrepreneurs like Dheeraj Gupta of Jumbo King Vada Pav and former IIM-A alumnus Sharath Babu, who declined a $185,000-per annum job offer to start a food company.

On the present business scenario, Ruia put to rest the debate between India and China by saying that China was way ahead in terms of manufacturing and consumption in oil, cement, automobiles among others and has managed to maintain quality.

"Quality and size of manufacturing show me what we will have to achieve to compete with China," said Ruia.