He is the richest Indian in the world; the richest Asian in the UK and now Forbes has listed him as the fifth richest person and the richest Indian in the world with a net worth of $32.0 billion. Does Lakhmi Niwas Mittal, Chairman and CEO of Mittal Steel Company need any further introduction? Born on June 15, 1950 in Rajasthan, Mittal grew up in Kolkata and earned his B Com from St Xavier's College. Thereafter he joined his family business in steel and went to Indonesia to look after a small steel plant there. He founded Ispat Indo in Indonesia, which eventually became the country's largest privately owned steel company. Eventually in 1989, he formed Caribbean Ispat to lease the Iron & Steel Company of Trinidad & Tobago.

Known as a master of international business, Mittal's Ispat International bought the assets of Caribbean Ispat in 1994 which, then, became the largest non-oil industrial complex in the Caribbean. Thereafter began a spree of acquisitions. He acquired Mexico's third largest steel producer, Sibalsa, in 1992 and renamed it Ispat Mexicana. Two years later, his gaze fell northwards and he bought Canada's number four steel maker, renaming it Ispat Sidbec. The next year, 1995, was a more eventful one. Mittal first bought Germany's fourth largest producer of wire rod, known for its mini-mill expertise and renamed it Ispat Hamburger Stahlwerke.

To streamline his global operations, Mittal then formed two companies, Ispat International and Ispat Shipping to provide technical and commercial services to the group and to meet its growing shipping needs. This was followed by another big-ticket acquisition. The group bought a 5.5 million tons pa blast furnace steel plant in Kazakhstan and renamed it Ispat Karmet. Later, the Steel Samrat went ahead in acquiring America's fourth largest steelmaker, Inland Steel Company.

In 1999 he bought the French company, Unimetal Group, including Trefileurope and SMR, from Usinor, thus consolidating its European operations too. Then it was Algeria, Romania Czech, Poland, Bosnia, Balkans, which fell to Mittal's acquisition spree. And soon the group became the world's largest steel maker with a stock market worth of around $21 billion and a combined capacity of 70 million tons of steel a year.

Mittal Steel gained 92 per cent control of Arcelor in July 2006 as it moved closer to completing its 25 billion euro (Rs. 145,000 crore) takeover of the European rival. Today he is President of the Board of Directors and CEO of Arcelor-Mittal which is the world's largest producer of low and mid-grade steels, with assets in Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Africa, Poland, Czech Republic, Indonesia and Kazakhstan.

Based in London, Mittal has received many awards and recognitions.

He was awarded Fortune magazines "European Businessman of the Year 2004", "Steelmaker of the Year" in 1996 by New Steel in the USA, and the "Willy Korf Steel Vision Award" in June 1998 by the American Metal Market and PaineWeber's World Steel Dynamics. Apart from his huge steel operations, Mittal is also associated with a number of organizations. He is a member of the Foreign Investment Council in Kazakhstan, the International Investment Council in South Africa, the World Economic Forum's International Business Council and the International Iron and Steel Institute's executive committee.

He is also a director of ICICI Bank and is on the advisory board of the Kellogg School of Management in the US. Mittal, an active philanthropist, recently donated $2 million for tsunami relief and set an example of how haves care for the have not. Living in a £120-million mansion in London with his wife Usha and son Aditya, Mittal still remains his usual charming self-simple, elegant and down-to-earth - the stuff the great men are made of.