NAME: ANIL AMBANI AGE: 46 DESIGNATION: CMD STATE: R-ADAG

He's aggressive, brash and flamboyant. And a recent India Today poll ranks him as the #1 business icon among the Indian youth. With good reason; ever since he parted ways with elder brother Mukesh a little over a year ago, he has announced a spate of high profile projects in the energy, entertainment and communications spaces. Now, the big picture-and the common thread running through these seemingly disparate and random moves-is slowly becoming apparent. His DTH venture, which was recently cleared by the government, his telecom empire and his footprint in Bollywood will combine nicely into a giant, fully integrated communications and entertainment empire. In other words, he's applying the Reliance business logic-of owning every link of the value chain-to the New Economy.

He has also tied up with the state-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) to bid for telecom licences in Kenya, Bhutan and Morocco-the first time the PSU has struck an alliance with any of its private sector domestic rivals. And, for good measure, he has also won the bid for constructing the first phase of the Mumbai Metro Rail system. But that can only be a consolation prize for a man who had set his sights on modernising the Delhi and Mumbai airports. He lost that bid allegedly for his friendship with a controversial UP politician and a Bollywood superstar. Ambani read the signals correctly and resigned his Rajya Sabha membership, which he'd won as an Independent supported by the Samajwadi Party.

People who know him say Ambani is very sharp, and an absolute whiz in finance and strategy (he planned and oversaw Reliance Industries' 100-year bond issue) and following Dhirubhai Ambani's death, regularly conducted the flagship's AGMs-till the partition of the undivided Reliance Group-much in the style of his legendary father. He also ran an almost year-long campaign to wrest an equitable share of the business. But there's still an area of weakness. While RIL has gone from strength to strength, Anil's part of the group, now named R-ADAG, has still to prove that it can implement all the ambitious projects in the sectors mentioned above and in power. It's going to be a trial by fire, and the world is waiting to see if Dhirubhai's younger son is really a chip of the old block.