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Meet the man who started at 22 and is worth 27,000 CR today. 1. At 24, Ajay Piramal had to take over his family's textile - Morarjee Textile Mills, in Bombay after his father passed away. To worsen things, his elder brother parted ways and took their best business - luggage maker VIP Industries. As he was lost, another tragedy struck him. 👇 2. His older brother passed away five years later of cancer, leaving him the breadwinner of his brother's three children, too. He realised the textile business was not his interest, and it was time to focus on new sectors and run as separate businesses. In 1984, Piramal Group was born. 🚀 3. The idea was simple ⏩ Acquire companies and scale them to great heights. Ajay started by acquiring Gujarat Glass Limited, manufacturing glass packaging for pharmaceutical and cosmetic products. He scaled it to 5 CR turnover by 1985, but his big break came three years later. 👇 4. In 1988, Nicholas Laboratories, an Australian Pharmaceutical MNC, was exiting India and was looking for buyers. Despite 100s of bids from large players, Ajay's vision to make it the top five pharma companies came through. He bought Nicholas for 16.5 CR. 💰 5. In 1991, he set up a formulation plant at Pithampur in Madhya Pradesh and changed the name to "Piramal Healthcare". He built marketing in Myanmar and focused on bulk drugs. As a result, it scaled from 19 CR revenue in 1988 to 441.8 CR in just ten years. 📉 6. Ajay did not stop the growth and made global acquisitions - Boehringer Mannheim (1996) and ICI (2002). As it became the top five pharma companies, NYSE-listed Abbott Labs acquired Piramal Healthcare for 17,100 CR in 2010, making the combined entity the biggest Indian pharma company with a 7% market share. 💪 7. Ajay had done the biggest deal of his life, but he was still not done. In 2012 - He started a privately owned real estate entity under the Piramal Group. In the same year, he acquired HUL's sea-facing property in Worli, Mumbai, for 452 CR. But Piramal Realty's life-defining year came three years later. 👇 8. In 2015 - Piramal Realty raised 2700 CR from private equity legends like Goldman Sachs and Warburg Pincus, making it one of the biggest investments in the real estate space. As it entered housing and capital finance, another PE legend, Blackstone, acquired his glass business for 7500 CR in 2012. 💵 9. Today, Piramal Group clocks revenue of 14,710 CR at a profit of 1,923.11 CR across all its companies in the real estate, finance and pharmaceutical sectors. Meanwhile, Ajay Gopikisan Piramal is India's 56th richest man worth 26,560 CR. 💪 ➡️ But his Piramal Foundation still impacts the lives of 11.3 CR people across 27 Indian states in health, education and waste management. 🙏