Shashi Ruia was a quintessential common man who never missed any chance to chat with ordinary people—from factory workers to clerks in the government departments. Also, the Marwari businessman never missed a chance to speak Tamil to natives of Tamil Nadu. Both traits rooted in his humble beginnings in the 1960s.
Ruia, who passed away in the morning today, led a life that had all the elements of a Bollywood movie— corporate rivalry, business highs and lows and family bonding. He always showed an attitude to bounce back from the lows.
The untimely death of their father, Nand Kishore Ruia, forced the sons -Shashi and Ravi - who had studied in Chennai, to enter business in 1969. The brothers took up projects soon after completing their studies, and the first one was a ₹2.5 crore order from the Madras Port Trust for the construction of an outer breakwater at the port. The elder brother, Shashi was the face of the company and interacting with everyone on ground and leading the campaign for bagging projects.
The Ruias shifted their base to Mumbai in 1977 after getting the contract for constructing ONGC's Bombay High pipeline. Though they diversified into shipping and contract drilling businesses and continued it till 1990. Two years later, they built a gas-based sponge iron unit and a power plant in Gujarat.
They never had to look back from there. In the mid-90s, they entered telecom and applied for building a refinery. Essar Telecom rolled out mobile services in Delhi, Punjab and UP (East) in 1995/96. Besides telecom, Essar built two huge assets--- a steel plant in Hazira and an oil refinery in Vadinar, Gujarat. The other businessmen in Mumbai and Gujarat were keenly watching his moves at that time as he was stepping into the sectors where they were enjoying leadership. In telecom, the joint venture with Hutchison Whampoa in 2003 was a breakthrough. With this Ruias expanded their telecom network across India. Shashi Ruia chose to stay invested in telecom business even after Vodafone acquired Hutchison's stake in 2007. Between 2005 and 2015, the Ruias acquired Aegis BPO, refineries in Stanlow and Kenya, a mine in Minnesota and steel plant in Algoma, the US. They sold the 33% stake in Vodafone for $5 billion for funding growth. However, high leverage became a problem for Ruia in the lean period of the economy. Essar Steel approached banks twice for restructuring loans after repayment defaults. Essar Oil had gone through CDR once.
Debt went uncontrollable. The Ruia's sold off the oil refinery to a consortium led by Russia's Rosneft and let go the steel plants to ArcelorMittal-Nippon Steel joint venture when insolvency proceedings were initiated to recover unpaid loans.
It was when Essar was looking to make a come back through smaller businesses that the industry veteran's demise happened. His son, Prashant Ruia, is now heading the operations of the group. The larger Ruia family, which stays together in South Mumbai, has everybody in the business to support Prashant Ruia.
