Dhirajlal Ambani, 69; Founder of Business Empire in India

Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani, 69, who went from gas station attendant to billionaire founder of India’s largest business empire, died Saturday in a Bombay hospital after suffering his second stroke June 24. He had been partly paralyzed since his first stroke in 1986.

Ambani, who established Reliance, a group with a market value of $9 billion, was ranked 138th on the most recent Forbes magazine list of the world’s wealthiest people with a personal fortune of $2.9 billion.

The son of a poor rural school teacher, Ambani began his career at 17 pumping gas in Yemen, then became a clerk for an affiliate of Burmah Shell. He dreamed of owning his own oil company and succeeded beyond his imagination, first founding Reliance Commercial Corp., trading spices and yarn, in 1958.

Eight years later, he was manufacturing Vimal polyester fabric, and then he added Reliance Petroleum, which now has the world’s fifth-largest refinery, to produce the petrochemical ingredients for the fabric. The conglomerate has recently moved into biotechnology and telecommunications as well.

Ambani was credited with transforming business operations in India when he raised money through the stock market, ending the near monopoly on bank financing traditionally doled out to select elite families. His strategy made millionaires out of thousands of middle-class Indians.

Despite criticism that he manipulated government policy to further his business interests, Ambani was also lauded for teaching Indian elitists that “to create wealth, one must first learn to share it.”