Kumar Birla, 43, exudes a quiet confidence in an interview at Birla's corporate headquarters in Mumbai.
After a longish lull, billionaire Kumar Birla, is back on the acquisition trail.
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Billionaire Kumar Birla recently bought a stake in the Living Media Group that publishes newsweekly India Today and owns TV channel Headlines Today.
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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.
The Mumbai police who were investigating the complaint were planning to set up a police post at Antilla, his 27 story residence and had meantime tightened security around it, in what is one of the toniest neighborhoods of South Mumbai. (Another notable billionaire resident in the area is Kumar Birla).
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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.
When Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of Aditya Birla Group, mooted the idea four years ago of acquiring U.S.- headquartered Novelis, the world's biggest producer of rolled aluminum, key executives at his commodities conglomerate shot it down as too risky.
Billionaire Anil Agarwal, who owns 54% of U.K.-listed Vedanta and serves as its chairman, pipped Lakshmi Mittal and Kumar Mangalam Birla of the Aditya Birla Group to acquire Sesa Goa, which was founded in 1954 and is based in the western Indian state of Goa.
Kumar Mangangalam of the Aditya Birla Group is the youngest Indian billionaire at 36, enjoying a ranking of 147.
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.
"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.
Today, he says, Birla has no trouble getting the cream of India's B-school crop, and Kumar personally is a big draw.
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