Billionaire Anil Agarwal, the Executive Chairman and Founder of Vedanta Resources Limited, has opened up about leaving his home as a teenager and arriving in Mumbai with only a tiffin box, bedding and his dreams to keep him motivated. Mr Agarwal is among the millions who arrive in the city of dreams every year with hopes of making it big. Today worth an estimated $3.6 billion (according to Forbes), he is one of the few who succeed.
In a tweet shared earlier this week, Anil Agarwal, 67, remembered the day he left Bihar and arrived in Mumbai. "Millions of people come to Mumbai to try their luck," he wrote. "I was one of them. I remember the day I left Bihar with only a tiffin box, bedding, and dreams in my eyes."
He added that he arrived at Mumbai's iconic Victoria Terminus station and saw sights that he had only seen in movies up until then. "I saw a kaali peeli taxi, a double-decker bus and the City of Dreams - all of which I had only seen in the movies," Mr Agarwal wrote. He concluded his post with a note encouraging the youth to "work hard and shoot for the stars".
"Agar aap majboot irade ke saath pehla kadam uthayenge, manzil milna tay hai! (If you take the first step with determination, success is guaranteed)," wrote the chairman of Vedanta.
Vedanta is a mining company that Mr Agarwal built from the ground-up. Founded in Mumbai as a scrap metal dealership, it is today among the largest mining companies in India. In recent years, Vedanta has faced criticism from several human rights and activist groups for its operations in the Niyamgiri hills of Odisha. In Tamil Nadu's Tuticorin, officially known as Thoothukudi, Vedanta has been accused of polluting the air and groundwater with its factory.
Mr Agarwal has opened up about his humble beginnings earlier as well. In a 2005 interview published on Rediff, he spoke about arriving in Mumbai in the 1970s as a 19-year-old - and never going back home to Patna. "That was the first time I sat in plane (on a student concession) and for the entire flight kept mum as I could not speak a word in English," he recalled.
