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Special Feature

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100 Most Influential People of 2007 as the indian economy moves into a new year with all guns blazing, b&e presents a compilation ofthe people who will matter most...

WITH THE LOOKS, COME $2.9 BILLION Manoj Benjamin! That’s the name the realty sector wants to get to know well,and real soon, for with $2.9 billion of planned foreign direct investment in thereal estate arena, in one shot, he becomes the king colada, the big enchilada,and for the sake of simple words, the number one player in the sector. If thisman’s name has a huge twang of an ethnic touch, wait till you hear about hiscorporation of which he is Chairman – Royal Indian Raj InternationalCorporation. The fact is that in the year 2007, the real-estate sector is expected to better the

already high growth being shown; and that despite the RBI’s consecutive hikes to the prime lending ratesin an attempt to curb demand push inflation. According to Assocham, the FDI in this sector is expected torise by 10% in FY 07. It has also forecasted that in FY07, the real-estate sector would attract 26% of totalFDI in the country. And to take advantage of that, Manoj is planning to bring this huge FDI under theIntegrated Township Development Program, a scheme of the Indian government. With his investment, hehas left behind heavyweights like Blackstone Group & Goldman Sachs (which have plans to invest around$1 billion each) and even the Dubai-based Emmar group (investing $800 million). The magnitude of the impact of Benjamin on the economy will be much more due to the fact that thecompany has prime land in metros like New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore, where already it has acquiredmore than 10,000 mind numbing acres. No doubt, with the US asset class being looked at negatively,Manoj’s great gamble might not give expected returns. But as long as Indians are Indians, real-estatewould be real estate, and Manoj, well, Manoj!

WILL HE GIVE US SOME OF HIS MONEY The Chairman of Vedanta Resources Plc, a diversified and integrated FTSE 250metals and mining group listed on the London Stock Exchange, has had a goodtime in 2006 and should be hoping for the best in 2007. The company, whoseprincipal operations are located in India with substantial operations in Zambiaand a copper mine in Australia, raked in the moolah in 2006. Boomingcommodity prices saw the company’s profits zoom, and now, flush with funds,Anil Aggarwal has announced the setting up of a $1.9 billion, 2400 MW greenfield

power plant in Orissa. “It is an attractive growth opportunity and we will leverage our project execution andoperation skills,” Anil had commented to the media in the recent past. Even for the man who has proven his mettle, he has continuously run into endless controversies involvingmilitant trade unions, green groups and government officials for over three decades in the mines andmetals industries; ergo, setting up and running a power plant is going to be a formidable challenge. Thoughsome analysts are skeptical about this new foray into the commercial energy business, Anil insists that thisis being attempted as per a carefully structured strategy set out at the time of listing. Agarwal cannot afford to give baseless forward looking statements, and that too when the global economicoutlook for 2007 for commodities, his mother lode, is not entirely positive. But Agarwal is confident of hisstrategy: “The success of our strategy supports our move to continue expanding our business both in ourexisting metals, where we are implementing projects to develop a million tonnes of each metal and incommercial energy, where we are announcing our first major project.” And now news also comes that he’spledged $1 billion grant as a promoter to the Vedanta University. For a cup that doesn’t seem to be runningdry, we’d sure love to be taught by him; but we’d love it more, if he, gulp, sends some of those billions ourway...

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