JRD Tata
India's largest business conglomerate, the Tata Group, grew from a $100 million group in 1938 when Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata took over as chairman, to a $5 billion global corporate house by the time he passed on the reins to his successor, Ratan Tata. When he assumed office, 34-year old JRD had just 14 enterprises under his belt. By the time he retired, the group was running as many as 95 businesses spread across the globe.
It was under his leadership that saw the group enter the automotive business with TELCO (Itnow known as Tata Motors), aviation with Air India International (subsequently nationalised) and information technology with Tata Consultancy Services.
JRD studied in London, France and India, but didn't get past matriculation as his plans to get to Cambridge did not materialise because his father asked him to join the family business.
Dhirubhai Ambani
Here is someone who had a dislike for education and preferred physical work instead. Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani, the man who founded Reliance Industries and who has figured in The Sunday Times list of top 50 businessman in Asia, was a high school dropout who did not even complete his matriculation.
The man who started out with just a rupee in his pocket, opened a small business in spices in Mumbai in the 1950s, moved to Ahmedabad to start a textile unit and finally set up a company in the 1960s, that was to become a behemoth in Indian corporate history.
Reliance Commercial Corporation, as it was then known, started off with a 350-sq-ft room with a telephone, a table, three chairs and only two assistants to help with the business. The company was engaged in polyester trading and expanded into manufacturing synthetic fabrics as under the popular brand name Vimal. Several expansions later, Reliance Industries as it was later named, got into big league in the 1990s. During this decade, its Hazira Petrochemical plant was set up and the group made its landmark global depository receipt issue in Reliance Petroleum. By the time Dhirubhai died in 2002, the company was a billion-dollar business conglomerate with interests in textiles, petrochemicals, telecom and other businesses
Gautam Adani
He has a dentist wife, but is himself an undergraduate, having studied only till the second year for B.Com degree.
A bit of a maverick, Gautam Adani chose to come to get into the diamond business, instead of joining his father's textile outfit. A millionaire in the 1980s at age 20, he went back to Ahmedabad to help his brother with his plastic factory and began trading in PVC, a key raw material.
In 1988, he established Adani Exports Limited (now known as the Adani Enterprises), the flagship company of the Adani Group, that traded in a variety of power and agricultural commodities. In 1995, the Adani group won the contract to run Mundra Port from the Gujarat government. Today, it is the largest private sector port in India, handling about 80 million tonnes of cargo a year.
Another group firm, Adani Power, has thermal power plants with capacity of 4,620 Mw, and is the largest private thermal power producer of the country and the largest solar power producer with 40 Mw capacity.
Steve Jobs
Described as the 'Father of the Digital Revolution', 'Futurist' and other suitable monikers, Steven Paul Jobs was a problem child at school, prone to playing pranks and acquiring test scores that could never have made the cut. However, he had a keen interest in electronics that was spurred in part by his association with his neighbour Bill Fernandes and with Steve Wozniak, a computer whiz kid with whom he would later partner to set up Apple Inc.
Jobs did attend Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but never acquired formal qualifications. He'd get weekly free meals at a Hare Krishna temple and sell empty coke cans to earn money for food on other days.
After a 1974 spiritual trip to India and experiments with LSD and Zen Buddhism, Jobs returned to work on some projects contracted to him by Atari Inc. In 1976, he set up Apple Inc, the company through which he established credentials as the pioneer of the computer revolution, along with Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios, which was later acquired by Walt Disney. But it was his re-entry in Apple in the late 1990s -- he had left the company in 1985 after a power struggle -- that established him as an inventor-cum-entrepreneur. In his second innings at the company, Jobs pulled Apple out from near bankruptcy, and made it profitable in 1998.
It was in this avatar that Jobs gave the world the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and established the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store. In the process, he wrote what many regard as one of the greatest turnaround stories of the corporate world in the US, or anywhere else in the world.
Bill Gates
He went to Harvard, alright, but he didn't come out with a degree. Instead, William Henry Gates tied up with childhood buddy Paul Allen to establish Microsoft Corporation in 1975 and sow the seeds of the personal computer revolution.
A regular rank-holder in Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people, and <i>the richest</i> individual on the planet between 1995 and 2009, Gates' fascination with computing started at age 13. At age 17, Gates and Allen started Traf-O-Data, a firm that made traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.
It was after taking leave of absence from Harvard that Gates and Allen started Microsoft, and following a successful demonstration at MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), that Gates decided to set up Microsoft. That was in the mid 1970s and Gates never went back to Harvard.
Microsoft would later evolve the MS-DOS operating system that would dominate the way work was done on the office computer for several years. Later still, in 1985, the Microsoft Windows operating system came into existence and virtually replaced DOS. This was followed by the release of the office suite, Microsoft Office in 1990. The next 10 years would see periodical upgrades of, and value addition to the Microsoft Windows suite.
Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO in January 2000, but remained chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself. Half a decase or so later he would move from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time, and devote his energies to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
OTHER FAMOUS DROP-OUTS
Richard Branson: The promoter of Virgin Atlantic and Virginn Megastore is a dyslexic who dropped out when he was 16 and started his first successful business venture, Student Magazine.
Michael Dell: A college dropout at age 19 years, he started what would become the most profitable personal computer maker in the world. His initial capital: $1,000 and a lot of fire in the belly
Walt Disney: A high school dropout at 16, Walter Elias Disney is a household name in the world of animation and theme parks. The Walt Disney Company, which he founded in the 1920s, has an annual revenue of more than $30 billion.
Henry Ford: The pioneer of America's auto industry left home at age 16 to work as a trainee machinist. He founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903
Milton Hershey: He was only educated up to the fourth grade but went on to establish what would become one of the biggest names in the chocolate and confectionery industry.
India's largest business conglomerate, the Tata Group, grew from a $100 million group in 1938 when Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata took over as chairman, to a $5 billion global corporate house by the time he passed on the reins to his successor, Ratan Tata. When he assumed office, 34-year old JRD had just 14 enterprises under his belt. By the time he retired, the group was running as many as 95 businesses spread across the globe.
It was under his leadership that saw the group enter the automotive business with TELCO (Itnow known as Tata Motors), aviation with Air India International (subsequently nationalised) and information technology with Tata Consultancy Services.
JRD studied in London, France and India, but didn't get past matriculation as his plans to get to Cambridge did not materialise because his father asked him to join the family business.
More From This Section
Dhirubhai Ambani
Here is someone who had a dislike for education and preferred physical work instead. Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani, the man who founded Reliance Industries and who has figured in The Sunday Times list of top 50 businessman in Asia, was a high school dropout who did not even complete his matriculation.
The man who started out with just a rupee in his pocket, opened a small business in spices in Mumbai in the 1950s, moved to Ahmedabad to start a textile unit and finally set up a company in the 1960s, that was to become a behemoth in Indian corporate history.
Reliance Commercial Corporation, as it was then known, started off with a 350-sq-ft room with a telephone, a table, three chairs and only two assistants to help with the business. The company was engaged in polyester trading and expanded into manufacturing synthetic fabrics as under the popular brand name Vimal. Several expansions later, Reliance Industries as it was later named, got into big league in the 1990s. During this decade, its Hazira Petrochemical plant was set up and the group made its landmark global depository receipt issue in Reliance Petroleum. By the time Dhirubhai died in 2002, the company was a billion-dollar business conglomerate with interests in textiles, petrochemicals, telecom and other businesses
Gautam Adani
He has a dentist wife, but is himself an undergraduate, having studied only till the second year for B.Com degree.
A bit of a maverick, Gautam Adani chose to come to get into the diamond business, instead of joining his father's textile outfit. A millionaire in the 1980s at age 20, he went back to Ahmedabad to help his brother with his plastic factory and began trading in PVC, a key raw material.
In 1988, he established Adani Exports Limited (now known as the Adani Enterprises), the flagship company of the Adani Group, that traded in a variety of power and agricultural commodities. In 1995, the Adani group won the contract to run Mundra Port from the Gujarat government. Today, it is the largest private sector port in India, handling about 80 million tonnes of cargo a year.
Another group firm, Adani Power, has thermal power plants with capacity of 4,620 Mw, and is the largest private thermal power producer of the country and the largest solar power producer with 40 Mw capacity.
Steve Jobs
Described as the 'Father of the Digital Revolution', 'Futurist' and other suitable monikers, Steven Paul Jobs was a problem child at school, prone to playing pranks and acquiring test scores that could never have made the cut. However, he had a keen interest in electronics that was spurred in part by his association with his neighbour Bill Fernandes and with Steve Wozniak, a computer whiz kid with whom he would later partner to set up Apple Inc.
Jobs did attend Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but never acquired formal qualifications. He'd get weekly free meals at a Hare Krishna temple and sell empty coke cans to earn money for food on other days.
After a 1974 spiritual trip to India and experiments with LSD and Zen Buddhism, Jobs returned to work on some projects contracted to him by Atari Inc. In 1976, he set up Apple Inc, the company through which he established credentials as the pioneer of the computer revolution, along with Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios, which was later acquired by Walt Disney. But it was his re-entry in Apple in the late 1990s -- he had left the company in 1985 after a power struggle -- that established him as an inventor-cum-entrepreneur. In his second innings at the company, Jobs pulled Apple out from near bankruptcy, and made it profitable in 1998.
It was in this avatar that Jobs gave the world the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and established the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store. In the process, he wrote what many regard as one of the greatest turnaround stories of the corporate world in the US, or anywhere else in the world.
Bill Gates
He went to Harvard, alright, but he didn't come out with a degree. Instead, William Henry Gates tied up with childhood buddy Paul Allen to establish Microsoft Corporation in 1975 and sow the seeds of the personal computer revolution.
A regular rank-holder in Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people, and <i>the richest</i> individual on the planet between 1995 and 2009, Gates' fascination with computing started at age 13. At age 17, Gates and Allen started Traf-O-Data, a firm that made traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.
It was after taking leave of absence from Harvard that Gates and Allen started Microsoft, and following a successful demonstration at MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), that Gates decided to set up Microsoft. That was in the mid 1970s and Gates never went back to Harvard.
Microsoft would later evolve the MS-DOS operating system that would dominate the way work was done on the office computer for several years. Later still, in 1985, the Microsoft Windows operating system came into existence and virtually replaced DOS. This was followed by the release of the office suite, Microsoft Office in 1990. The next 10 years would see periodical upgrades of, and value addition to the Microsoft Windows suite.
Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO in January 2000, but remained chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself. Half a decase or so later he would move from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time, and devote his energies to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
OTHER FAMOUS DROP-OUTS
Richard Branson: The promoter of Virgin Atlantic and Virginn Megastore is a dyslexic who dropped out when he was 16 and started his first successful business venture, Student Magazine.
Michael Dell: A college dropout at age 19 years, he started what would become the most profitable personal computer maker in the world. His initial capital: $1,000 and a lot of fire in the belly
Walt Disney: A high school dropout at 16, Walter Elias Disney is a household name in the world of animation and theme parks. The Walt Disney Company, which he founded in the 1920s, has an annual revenue of more than $30 billion.
Henry Ford: The pioneer of America's auto industry left home at age 16 to work as a trainee machinist. He founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903
Milton Hershey: He was only educated up to the fourth grade but went on to establish what would become one of the biggest names in the chocolate and confectionery industry.