What now Mr Birla?
A quarter century’s effort by one of India’s best known billionaires to make a go of the telecoms business has come to naught, leaving him to play catch-up with more nimble-footed peers.
Why read this story?
Editor's note: Kumar Mangalam Birla has finally thrown in the towel. It’s as close as it gets to an admission of defeat in the fight to save Vodafone Idea. A fight he’s been fighting for many years now. On 4 August, the board of directors of Vodafone Idea accepted his request to step down as non-executive director and non-executive chairman and elected current non-executive director Himanshu Kapania as the non-executive chairman. India loves its homegrown billionaires. The names Tata, Birla and Ambani are often used by people to emphasize the importance of prudent business decisions that led to these families amassing wealth over generations. Rarely does a member of one of these families become a spectacle in full public glare. Anil Ambani is an extreme exception, going down in corporate history as one of India’s largest wealth destroyers. Kumar Mangalam Birla’s telecoms misadventure, while certainly not in the same league as the former, does put him on this rather dismal list. (Incidentally, Ratan Tata’s telecom bet failed too, costing the Tata group upwards of $10 billion.) It has been a while coming, …
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