Anil Ambani	Mukesh Ambani

The loudest buzz in corporate India is not about whether estranged brothers, Mukesh and Anil Ambani, who went their separate ways after the formal division of the Rs 90,000-crore Reliance group, are still warring over the finer details of what must be India's biggest ownership settlement, but about how each of them is poaching talent from MNCs, domestic competitors as well as companies overseas. The buzz is about who the latest manager to join either brother is, and how much he's being paid. At least a million bucks (that's bucks as in us dollars, not poorly rupees) is what is rumoured to be paid to at least a couple of the new recruits that have signed up, either with Mukesh's Reliance Group or with Anil's Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (RADAG).

Both Anil and Mukesh have big plans in new areas lined up and talent induction is something that both have embarked upon on a war footing. Younger brother Anil who, after the settlement, won control of the group's telecoms, energy and financial services businesses, has already hired key personnel from companies such as Nokia, MCI, Times Internet, Vedanta and the WPP group, besides insurance companies like Birla Sun Life and HDFC Standard Life. Besides expansion of telecoms, Anil, who bought film production and distribution company Adlabs, which also owns multiplexes, in June last year, has drawn up big plans for entertainment and the insurance business.

His elder brother Mukesh, who retains the large petroleum and petrochemicals business and has a swathe of new plans, isn't sitting idle. Besides the recently announced $6-billion (Rs 27,000-crore) project to build a 29-million tonne oil refinery next to Reliance Industries' existing 33-million tonne unit at Jamnagar, Mukesh has plans to grow big in retailing-setting up malls that will sell everything from food and consumer electronics to textile and clothing. Plus, already underway is a network of retail petrol stations, with shops, restaurants and rest-rooms. Little wonder then that Mukesh is hiring at top speed, picking up executives from companies like retailer Pantaloon, fast moving consumer goods giant Unilever, consumer electronics major Electrolux, watch and jewellery retailer Titan and us restaurant chain McDonalds.

Going Where The Action Is

In July last year, Nokia's former Chief Marketing Officer Sanjay Behl, 37, came on board at Reliance Infocomm. Behl, who had worked for a decade at Unilever before Nokia, signed on at a time when the ink had still not dried on the settlement deal that the two brothers signed last June. Rumoured to have been hired at an annual compensation of more than Rs 1 crore, Behl says it's the challenge of being in a place where the action was, is what tilted the scales in favour of Reliance. "It's a lot more fun working here," says Behl, who shifted base from Delhi and now operates from the Reliance Infocomm Centre at Navi Mumbai. Behl works directly with Anil Ambani in shaping the new Reliance Infocomm brand and its positioning.

A dozen other senior managers from MNCs as well as Indian companies have followed Behl to be part of the new team that Anil Ambani is putting together. In January this year, Michael P. Sauer from telecoms giant MCI signed up as the New York-based president of Reliance Communications Inc., the US based subsidiary that looks after the company's operations in the Americas.

Around 50 kilometres from Navi Mumbai, at the Reliance Industries' headquarters in Maker Chambers IV in Mumbai's Nariman Point, the fervour to hire fresh blood is no less. Mukesh Ambani's most prized recent catch has been Raghu Pillai, the 49-year-old manager who was most recently the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Pantaloon Retail, but before that the main architect of the RPG Group's successful retail ventures-Foodworld, MusicWorld and Health & Glow. Pillai, who refused to talk to Business Today, has signed up as Chief Executive of Reliance's big plans in retail for a rumoured Rs 5 crore ($ 1.11 million). Mukesh's plans in retail involve initial investments to the tune of Rs 3,375 crore and he wants to cover 800 cities and towns with store formats that range from petrol pump convenience stores to malls and supermarts to hyper markets and fashion retailing. Pillai, a Harvard Business School grad, will spearhead the strategy in categories like food and grocery, consumer durables, jewellery, clothing and textiles.

So palpable is the buzz about the hiring spree at both the Reliance factions, that not a day passes by without fresh buzz on who's on his way to Reliance. As BT went to press, the latest to join was Titan Industries coo Bijou Kurien as Chief Executive, Life Style division. A couple of weeks back, Gunender Kapur, CEO, Unilever Nigeria, and former head of foods business at HLL, signed up as Chief Executive of Reliance's food and grocery retailing business.

To be sure, the hiring fever at both the Reliances is not out of the ordinary. When the undivided Reliance was expanding in the 1980s and 1990s, under the leadership of patriarch Dhirubhai, for fresh talent, it looked outside the group. Then the core expansion was in petrochemicals and petroleum, through a vertically integrated strategy. Reliance then picked up people from competitors. These were then the PSU giants like ONGC, IPCL, Indian Oil Corp., etc., many of whose managers formed the team that powered the Reliance juggernaut in those decades. Today, for talent in new businesses like communications, retailing and entertainment, the two Ambani scions, though no longer together, have to similarly look outside. 'Outside" in today's context implies MNCs, FMCG companies and other private sector companies.