Kumar Birla

Kumar Mangalam Birla (born 14 June 1967) is an Indian billionaire Industrialist, philanthropist, and the chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, one of the largest global conglomerates in India. He is the chancellor of the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani and ex Chairman of Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. According to Forbes, he has an estimated net worth of US$13.8 billion, as of March 2023 making him the 9th richest person in India.

Birla took over as chairman of the Aditya Birla Group in 1995, at the age of 28, following the death of his father Aditya Vikram Birla. During his tenure as chairman, the group’s annual turnover has increased from US$2 Billion in 1995 to US$45 billion in 2021. Today, the group is present in 36 countries across six continents with over 50% of its revenues coming from overseas operations.

The majority of Birla’s fortune is derived from his ownership of Aditya Birla Group, a conglomerate that controls his main holdings. These include 30% of Hindalco Industries, the world’s largest aluminum rolling company, a 34% stake in Grasim Industries, which controls India’s biggest producer of the building material, and a 10% stake in Vodafone Idea, which was created in a 2018 merger.

He also owns a 14% stake in Aditya Birla Capital, a financial services provider. The shares are held by a promoter group, which includes family members and Mumbai-based holding companies, including IGH Holdings and Turquoise Investments, according to a December 2022 exchange filing. Shares held by his relatives are credited to Birla to reflect his status as chairman.

The group’s commodity trading arm, Swiss Singapore Overseas Enterprises, is valued using reported financial results and the average price-to-earnings multiple of three publicly traded peers: Glencore PLC, Archer-Daniels-Midland Co and Bunge Ltd.

Its cellulose business, Domsjo Fabriker, is valued using reported financial results and the average enterprise value-to-Ebit, enterprise value-to-Ebitda, enterprise value-to-sales and price-to-earnings multiples of four publicly traded peers: Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Ltd, Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing Ltd, Stora Enso Oyj and UPM-Kymmene Oyj.

The valuation was updated on March 7, 2023 with new financial information of closely-held companies. This led to an increase of about $1.9 billion in the calculation.

The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of dividends, insider transactions, taxes and market performance.

Pragnya Ram, a spokeswoman for the billionaire, confirmed Birla’s holdings and the net worth calculation.

Biography

Education: London Business School, University of Mumbai

The Birla Group, which started as a cotton trading company in 1857, is one of India’s oldest family-owned businesses. The outfit has interests in metals, cement, financial services, telecommunications and retail.

Kumar’s great-grandfather Ghanshyam Das Birla, created Hindalco Industries in 1958. It is now India’s second-largest aluminum maker. Ghanshyam Das, who financed Mohandas Gandhi’s fight for independence from British rule, expanded the group’s interests to include cement, chemicals and rayon. Gandhi was assassinated on the grounds of Ghanshyam Das’s New Delhi house in 1948. The estate has been converted into a memorial to the freedom fighter.

Born in 1967, Kumar was raised in Kolkata and Mumbai, and earned his MBA from London Business School. He married his wife, Neerja Kasliwal, at age 22. Today, Neerja is the vice chairwoman for the family’s education projects and oversees the Aditya Birla World Academy, an international school in Mumbai.

Kumar took over as chairman of the family business at age 28 when his father, Aditya Vikram Birla, died of cancer in 1995. His father had expanded abroad, setting up companies in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Kumar spent a year looking at the group’s companies, traveling from factory to factory. He revised old financial practices, hired managers from multinational companies and broke with the tradition of employing aging staff, setting a retirement age of 60.

The billionaire bought up cement companies amid a slump in stock prices in 1998. UltraTech Cement is India’s largest producer of the building material. He also moved into new markets, including mobile phones and supermarkets. Hindalco Industries, India’s second-largest aluminum producer, bought Atlanta-based Novelis for $6 billion in 2007, the largest acquisition by the Aditya Birla Group. Novelis is the world’s biggest producer of rolled aluminum which is used in beverage cans and other products.

Aditya Birla Group became the world’s largest maker of carbon black, used in tire manufacturing, when it acquired Georgia-based Columbian Chemicals for $875 million in 2011. Birla is seeking to expand in commodities to take advantage of long-term growth in Asian demand. Aditya Birla Group owns Essel Mining & Industries, a closely held iron ore miner, which accounts for about half of his personal net worth.

Board Memberships and Affiliations

• Chairman, Aditya Birla Group.
• Chancellor, BITS, Pilani, Hyderabad, Goa and Dubai.
• Chairman, Governing Council, The BITS School of Management (BITSoM) .
• Chairman, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
• Member, Asia Pacific Advisory Board, London Business School (LBS).
• Chairman, Rhodes India Scholarship Committee for Oxford University, England.
• Director, G. D. Birla Medical Research and Education Foundation
• Former Chairman, IIT Delhi.
• Former Director, Central Board of Directors, Reserve Bank of India.
• Former Chairman, Advisory Committee, Ministry of Company Affairs.
• Former Chairman, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) Committee on Corporate Governance.
• Former Chairman, Board of Trade, Ministry of Commerce & Industry.
• Former Chairman, SEBI’s Committee on Insider Trading.
• Former Convener, PM’s Task Force on Administrative and Legal Simplifications.
• Former Member, Prime Minister of India’s Advisory Council on Trade and Industry

Milestones

• 1958 Ghanshyam Das establishes Hindalco Industries.
• 1990 Starts participating in the family business.
• 1995 Takes over as chairman Aditya Birla Group after father’s death.
• 2003 Buys cement business of Larsen & Toubro and names it UltraTech.
• 2007 Hindalco buys Atlanta-based Novelis for $6 billion.
• 2007 Opens first supermarket.
• 2009 Idea Cellular buys 41 percent of Spice Communications.
• 2014 India’s highest court rules allocation of coal mines since 1993 was illegal.

Honors and awards

Philanthropy

As per the EdelGive Hurun India Philanthropy List 2021, Kumar Mangalam Birla and his family ranked fourth on the philanthropy list with donations mostly to the healthcare sector. In 2020, the Aditya Birla Group contributed Rs. 500 crores towards COVID relief measures. This included a contribution of Rs. 400 crores to the PM-CARES fund.

Kumar Mangalam Birla has created a 15 million pound endowed scholarship programme to support 10 full-time MBA candidates every year at the London Business School. The BK Birla Scholars Programme is named after Birla’s late grandfather Basant Kumar Birla. This scholarship programme is the largest endowed scholarship gift to a European business school.

The Birla family has built schools and temples around the India, including BITS Pilani and Birla Mandirs.