Business career and companies
Birla joined the family business in 1991, working in the textile and cement companies before his father's death put him at the head of the group. His first years as chairman were spent on a task that had nothing to do with new purchases: the group's 70 or so companies carried separate names, separate logos and separate identities, and he set about making one group out of them. The Aditya Birla Group name, the common identity and the shared statement of values that followed are his earliest visible work.[1]
The change of direction came around 2000, when the group began buying rather than only building. The aluminium business bought a copper mine in Australia, the cement business bought the largest rival capacity available, and the aluminium rolling business bought its way into the global supply chain. These purchases made the group much larger and much more exposed to commodity cycles at the same time, which is why the following decade was as much about managing debt as about making acquisitions.[1][4]
His own explanation of the strategy has been consistent: he has said the group looks for businesses where India's cost base gives it an advantage and where scale decides who survives, and he has preferred to be first or second in a market rather than to hold a small position in several. Cement, aluminium, viscose staple fibre, carbon black and, later, paints were all approached on that basis.[4]
By the mid 2010s the group's problem had changed. Its older businesses, cement and metals, are mature and capital hungry, and the industries that were growing fastest, telecom and retail, were also the ones where competition was destroying prices. The group's answer was to consolidate: it merged its telecom arm with a rival, folded the cement acquisitions into one company and created a new consumer conglomerate under the Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail name. The result is a group whose earnings now come half from commodities and half from services to consumers.[1][5]
Birla's public role grew alongside the group. He became a member of the board of trade in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, chaired a committee of the securities regulator on corporate governance, served on the board of the Reserve Bank of India, and chaired two of India's most important educational institutions. He has also been one of the Indian businessmen whose views were sought by successive governments on industrial policy, which is a position the family's scale rather than any elected office has given him.[1]
