Birla shipped out Indian experts in risk management and lopped off 10% of the workforce.
It's no accident that Birla companies tend to be among the lowest-cost producers in their industries.
Kumar Birla, 43, exudes a quiet confidence in an interview at Birla's corporate headquarters in Mumbai.
Last year Novelis failed to cover its cost of capital, though Mr Birla is optimistic.
Its Liaoning Birla carbon in China, a partnership with Dashiqiao Ronghua Co, is in operation since 2003.
FORBES: Billionaire Kumar Birla expands his carbon black footprint
Women, who were never welcome during Aditya Birla's time, now account for nearly a fifth of the workforce.
This company is owned by a group called Birla, which produces about a third of India's asbestos sheeting.
Kumar Mangangalam of the Aditya Birla Group is the youngest Indian billionaire at 36, enjoying a ranking of 147.
After a longish lull, billionaire Kumar Birla, is back on the acquisition trail.
FORBES: Billionaire Kumar Birla expands his carbon black footprint
Many of today's largest Indian corporations, including those run by the Tata and Birla families, got their start trading jute.
The group has had mixed success in financial services and retailing, but Birla says he plans to keep investing behind them.
Today, he says, Birla has no trouble getting the cream of India's B-school crop, and Kumar personally is a big draw.
His legacy devolved on him sooner than he'd expected when his father, Aditya Birla, died of cancer in 1995 at age 52.
Birla's units in Thailand, Thai Rayon and Thai Carbon Black, have both qualified for FORBES ASIA's 200 Best Under A Billion Companies.
Initially, it seemed Birla's critics were right, especially when the global economy went into a spin, causing further hardship to cash-strapped Novelis.
Tata and Aditya Birla did too, though their subsidiaries Tata Motors and Novelis are still viewed as risky bets by debt investors.
Thomas Verghese, chief executive of Aditya Birla retail, says the industry expected that the government could allow FII portfolio investment in retail, if not FDI.
In the entrance lobby a bronze bust of his father, the late Aditya Birla, stands on an onyx pedestal decorated with artificial flowers.
In the boardroom a portrait of Ghanshyam Das Birla, his great-grandfather and the architect of the Birla empire, reminds Kumar of his pedigree.
The academic heads the Aditya Birla India Center at Kumar's alma mater--he funded it in his father's name--and recently joined the board of UltraTech.
Billionaire Kumar Birla recently bought a stake in the Living Media Group that publishes newsweekly India Today and owns TV channel Headlines Today.
FORBES: Indian Billionaire Battle Exposes Nexus Between Business And Media
Kumar Mangalam Birla, 30, became chairman of nine companies in the Aditya Birla group, India's second-largest industrial house, after his father died in late 1995.
Birla showed us round their factory, reputedly one of India's safest.
The London Business School grad is the fourth generation of the storied Birla clan, whose roots go back to 1857 in cotton trading in Rajasthan state.
"It was a bold bet, but Kumar didn't flinch from making it, " says Sumant Sinha, Birla's former finance head, who now chairs Savant Advisors, a Mumbai corporate finance consultancy.
Unusually for the fourth generation of such a wealthy family business, Kumar Birla "wants to put his own mark on the group, " says London Business School professor Nirmalya Kumar.
In a first for the Birlas, Kumar introduced a retirement policy and started hiring experienced executives from outside: Hindalco's Bhattacharya was a 28- year Unilever veteran when he joined Birla in 1999.
In 1970, when India was still a country of licenses and controls, Aditya Birla, then in his 20s, had led a charge overseas, mainly to Southeast Asia, and was credited with building India's first multinational group.
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