Newsmaker: Amitabh Jhunjhunwala

The number cruncher

Amitabh Jhunjhunwala

If you have been following the live TV coverage of the quarterly results of Reliance Industries, you could not have failed to notice a tall, lanky man surrounded by an eager crowd. Why, the crowd around Amitabh Jhunjhunwala (48) could give even Anil Ambani a complex at times.

Now, he is centrestage in the whole Reliance drama, for his surprise decision to quit Reliance Industries. The Mukesh Ambani camp has obliquely alleged that Jhunjhunwala was talking to outsiders on company affairs, while the Anil Ambani camp suggested that Jhunjhunwala was eased out by the other camp to settle scores.

The protagonist himself has maintained a studied silence on the issue and has even refused to be photographed in and around the Reliance facilities.

Whatever be the charge, Jhunjhunwala was truly an insider in the Rs 90,000 crore Reliance Industries. In a short span of nine years with the Reliance group, Jhunjhunwala graduated from a board position in Reliance Capital to the treasurers' position in the mother company, which meant that he was party to each and every financial transaction in the group.

Jhunjhunwala refused to cooperate for this report. But executives who worked in the well-oiled Reliance treasury speak in awe of the financial ingenuity of the two Reliance treasurers, Alok Agarwal and Jhunjhunwala, who could do the spreadsheets in their heads even as Anil Ambani threw options at them.

More important, they wax eloquent on Jhunjhunwala's ability to whip out the most "tax efficient" solutions in any given scenario, which got him the mandate to do all of Reliance's fund raising transactions, as also all merger and acquisitions.

Jhunjhunwala is said to have worked out the merger of Reliance Petroleum and Reliance Industries, and the takeover of BSES, now renamed Reliance Energy.

After finishing school from St Columbas in New Delhi and under graduate studies from Shri Ram College of Commerce in 1975, Jhunjhunwala interned with the Delhi CA firm of Khanna and Annadhnam. The newly minted chartered accountant started his own practice in 1979.

The firm Amitabh Jhunjhunwala & Co collected a motley group of clients, one of which was Reliance Industries. Over the next 14 years of his private practice, Jhunjhunwala shuttled between Delhi and Mumbai and built up a formidable reputation as a tax advisor.

In 1993, when Shyam Kothari was in the process of setting up the country's first private sector mutual fund, Kothari Pioneer, Jhunjhunwala was the natural choice as fund manager.

A colleague, who claims to have known Jhunjhunwala from his Kothari Pioneer days, recalls the long hours both put in to put up systems and practices to get the fledgling fund moving.

Jhunjhunwala's success with the Kothari Pioneer Prima Fund, which he was managing, got him that call from Maker-IV, the headquarters of the Reliance group.

In June 1995, he chucked his flourishing private practice and moved finally into the Reliance fold, at Reliance Capital. Success came easily, and Jhunjhunwala was rewarded with a board position in Reliance Energy in July 2001, and the treasurer's post in 2002.

Married for the last 25 years, the Jhunjhunwalas have one son who is currently doing his under graduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

That also means that the couple have not taken a proper vacation in the last three years, tending to fly out to Berkeley every year to meet their son.

Strictly vegetarian and a teetotaler, Jhunjhunwala is partial to chocolate chip cookies and cannot help swiping a few even between talking numbers.