NAME: Kumar Mangalam Birla AGE: 38 years DESIGNATION: Chairman GROUP: Aditya Birla Group

Kumar Mangalam Birla was a callow youth of 28 when he was suddenly thrust into the (rather large) shoes of his late father in 1995. Few people then gave him the chance of a snowball in hell. Not any more. The Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, who's a chartered accountant and a management grad from London Business School, has just announced the mega-merger of Indian Rayon, Indo Gulf Fertilisers and Birla Global Finance into a new company called Aditya Birla Nuvo that is expected to close the current fiscal with a topline of Rs 4,000 crore. He's now being hailed as a visionary who's earned his place at the high table of India Inc. Birla began by quietly modernising hr practices in his companies: he introduced a retirement policy (till then, the group didn't have one-and about 350 senior people left), hired top-notch professionals and ushered in a meritocracy in an organisation steeped in tradition. Insiders say he delegates real authority to his top managers. With his team of pros in place, Birla began rationalising his portfolio of businesses-exiting some businesses, reducing the share of fibre-based businesses, while at the same time beefing up his presence in non-ferrous metals and cement. The result: his empire has grown almost five-fold in the 10 years since he took over, from Rs 7,200 crore to Rs 33,000 crore. Along the way, he bought Alcan subsidiary Indal for Rs 1,000 crore and wrested Larsen & Toubro's prized cement division for Rs 2,200 crore, to emerge as the largest cement manufacturer in the country. He's also investing about Rs 20,000 crore on massive capacity expansions in his cement, aluminium, copper and fertiliser businesses. The next goal: "We hope to enter the Fortune 500 list as a group by the turn of the decade." The bar just went up a few notches.