Pravinbhai Thakker

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Pravinbhai Thakker arrived in Aden in 1951 where he worked in his brother's business, `Popular Stores' which was located in Steamer Point. Steamer Point, in those days,  was a bustling area as a major stopover for ships on the main shipping routes. 

It was 1952 when Pravinbhai first met Ramnikbhai Ambani, elder brother of Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani, nicknamed Dhirubhai, who was working in the French trading company, A Besse & Co - Aden's largest trading company. 

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Dhirubhai who was barely 20, arrived in Aden a year later in 1953 and joined his brother at the Besse company. He began working for the Royal Dutch Shell, which was looking after the petrol division of A Besse & Co. From day one it became apparent that here was a young man with loads of ambition, and was clearly in the right company to learn from Besse the skills he would need for the rest of his career. Like Antonin Besse he learned Arabic quickly and was soon talking like a local. 

The same year, Pravinbhai decided to branch out on his own, winning the important exclusive agencies for Rolex and Canon. He started his shop - Reliance Stores but continued to be dependent on A Besse & Co for a host of other products. Hence his contact with Dhirubhai continued. The business contact developed into a long-standing friendship based on their common Gujarati origins. 

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Dhirubhai kept track of his friend's business progress, impressed with Pravinbhai's choice of business name. "I like the name Reliance very much as it communicates a sense of dependability to the customer. And look at you...you now own a Mercedes which means you have prospered quite a bit. Reliance has proved to be a very lucky name," said Dhirubhai. 

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Dhirubhai married and after a few years returned to India while Pravinbhai continued with his business in Aden till December 1966. Dhirubhai had developed excellent contacts in the petroleum business in that part of the world. Pravinbhai  never imagined the name of his store in Aden would be made so famous by Dhirubhai a few decades later with his publicly-listed, billion dollar Reliance Industries company in India. And Dhirubhai has never hidden this fact from anybody as he acknowledged the origin of the name Reliance Industries during a public meeting in August or September 1977 at Rajkot.

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He had gone to Rajkot with an audio-visual presentation as part of the road show to raise equity from the public for the maiden issue by Reliance Industries. "I have stolen the name of my company, Reliance, from my friend here," he told the public. And so the erstwhile name of a small store in South Yemen has become famous the world over.