Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of self-reliance can be attained by making use of Internet and technology. - Mukesh Ambani

Then, we stumbled on human and plant biotech. We were fortunate to have some good people and decided that Reliance can build this business over 5-10 years without any great revenue pressures. In the mainstream business, there was telecom or what I call infocomm.

In the '80s, when I came in, the ground rules were made clear to me. 'Build this business from scratch, without taking anyone from Reliance.' That forced you to be very disciplined. I looked around and figured out in three months that this industry runs on heroes.

One of my biggest obsessions today is that senior people must give bright 25-year olds the opportunity to contribute meaningfully.