How ambition, persistence, luck, and timing create a significant population of wealthy consumers
IN 2001, FIFTY YEARS AFTER Mao’s revolution and Gandhi’s triumph, there were just five billionaires in the two most populous countries in the world (figure 3-1). Back then, China’s only billionaire was Rong Yiren, an eighty-five-year-old descendant of Wuxi traders whose close relationship with China’s top leaders became a platform upon which he built a business empire. Three of the four Indians on the Forbes 2001 list were self-made entrepreneurs whose fortunes were transformed after the end of British rule. The fourth hailed from an old business family.1
Azim Premji, aged fifty-six ...
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