Ananya Birla: From a singer, an entrepreneur to a business leader

Birla sees Ananya—who is on the boards of Hindalco, Grasim, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail and Aditya Birla Management Corporation—playing a deeper role in the paints (Birla Opus) and B2B ecommerce businesses (Birla Pivot) under Grasim and in Hindalco’s shift towards sustainable solutions and low-carbon future. She has played a key role, with the rest of the team, in framing of the digital solutions app for Aditya Birla Capital Digital. Aditya Birla Capital caters to 3.5 crore customers across its businesses which include lending, mutual funds and other financial products.       

Ananya is also playing a deeper role in the group’s Birla Estates and the Aditya Birla Global Trading, whose name Ananya rechristened from the earlier Swiss Singapore Overseas Enterprises and is now a commodity trading solutions firm.

“My role is still evolving; I have a good understanding of the macro level of everything going on in the group and the direction which the group is taking. That has helped me give my own inputs where I think the group is going and the steps which need to be taken,” she tells Forbes India.  

This would mean consolidation of artificial intelligence businesses and focusing more on consumer businesses. “This is a fantastic time to enter consumer businesses and we have the right to win there, with the trust factor that we have,” she adds.

A path beyond commodities

Most of Aditya Birla Group’s businesses have seen steady growth in recent years, particularly the commodities-driven cement and metals businesses. UltraTech Cement, India’s largest cement manufacturer, in July announced purchasing 32.7 percent of the promoters’ stake in India Cements. UltraTech, which in April crossed the 150 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) capacity, is forecast to cross the 200 MTPA capacity in FY27, as expansions take shape, Birla said at its AGM this year.

Hindalco, on the back of higher average metal prices, has seen a 25 percent year-on-year increase in its Q1FY25 net profit, supported by favourable macros, operational efficiencies and lower input costs. The copper business achieved its highest quarterly Ebitda driven by high domestic sales and healthy by-product credits.

The group’s financial services arm, Aditya Birla Capital, has seen a 26 percent growth in topline and a 15 percent growth on the bottomline year-on-year, in Q1FY25. Through its recently launched digital platform, the company hopes to add 30 million users over the next three years.

Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail (ABFRL), where Ananya is a director, has the Louis Philippe and Van Heusen brands in India while international brands include The Collective (housing over 100 of the world’s fashion brands) in its portfolio. ABFRL has clocked ₹14,280 crore in revenues in FY24 through sales across 12 million square feet of retail space. Here also, Birla plans for an aggressive digital push through its TMRW platform, targeting about 30 innovative brands over the next three years.

Birla is aware that the pivot towards consumer-facing businesses was long awaited. While announcing the investment of ₹5,000 crore towards retail gold jewellery in July, he said that a fourth of the group’s business in the next five years—or $25 billion in revenues—will come from consumer-facing businesses. Ananya’s pivot and the role of her younger brother Aryaman in the group businesses appear well timed. Aryaman, a one-time cricketer, has now returned to the family-run business and works alongside Ananya in the paints, retail, fashion and real estate businesses. He also leads the dining/ hospitality business of the group.

Ananya is candid about her conversations with her father on her role in the group. “I told my father that I did not want an official designation within the group because it constricts me and that is not what gives me happiness. I want to work hard and see that my work is having an impact within the group,” she says.

Ananya, who studied economics and management at Oxford University, understands the responsibility which comes with being the fifth generation of the Birla family, which was founded by Baldeo Das Birla. The Birla family shifted their focus from speculative trading in commodities and opium under Baldeo Das Birla towards building factories and industries in cotton, jute, tea, cement and chemicals businesses under the leadership of his son Ghanshyam Das Birla, Kumar Birla’s great grandfather.

The businesses further expanded into petrochemicals, telecommunications and textiles under Kumar Birla’s father Aditya Birla, who was also instrumental in taking some of the businesses overseas into Southeast Asia. 

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Svatantra & new projects

“It is important for me to contribute to the legacy while also making sure that I stick to who I am. Otherwise there’s no point in doing anything,” Ananya says. Self-discovery came early to Ananya, when she turned entrepreneur at the age of 17, founding Svatantra Microfin in 2012, and started operations a year later.

Svatantra started business at a time when banks were—and still are—reluctant to expand operations deep into India’s hinterland to provide loans and financial services to the unbanked. More than a decade on, Svatantra is now India’s second-largest non-banking microfinance company, after listed leader CreditAccess Grameen that has an AUM (assets under management) of ₹26,304 crore serving nearly 50 lakh borrowers.

Svatantra has had a stellar few years, with a combined AUM of ₹17,000 crore, says Ananya. This March, private equity firms Advent International and Multiples signed an agreement to invest $230 million into Svatantra, making it the largest investment by private equity investors in the microfinance sector in India.

This was after Svatantra announced in 2023 that it will acquire microfinance company Chaitanya India Fin Credit from the Navi Group for ₹1,479 crore, owned by former Flipkart founder and Navi CEO Sachin Bansal.

Ananya has more on her mind for Svatantra. “We want to be completely responsible lenders, to fuel entrepreneurs that fuel the Indian economy,” she says. The goal, she adds, is to get to that and secure the No 1 position in the microfinance space. “My aim is to go all in or not at all.”  

The path is going to be rough, because microfinance in India is starting to show signs of weakening, with concerns over rising bad loans. Commercial banks and small finance banks, also lenders to rural India, have, in the June-ended quarter, complained of this concern. The data also seems to indicate this: The portfolio at risk > 180 days (an amount of the loan portfolio which is due by over 180 days) has risen to 7.9 percent for the quarter ended March for the industry, compared to 7.4 percent in the quarter ended June 2023, according to MFIN India.   

Ananya admits the industry has gone through tough times. “There are different reasons impacting businesses in different states. We have to focus on what we can control... we can’t control market dynamics,” she says.

She says she is working on at least three to four new consumer facing projects, but did not divulge more. Ananya wants to let her work speak for itself, as it has done in Svatantra’s case. “I believe I have grown and evolved since I started out, however, at the core, I am still very much the same person. I am now more confident in myself and my abilities, and I have grown to be more patient,” she says.

The Aditya Birla Group’s recent ad campaign ‘A force for good’ could well fit into what Ananya is building for the family business and herself as an individual.