Despite ongoing geopolitical tensions and the consequent increase in fuel prices, the major businesses of the Aditya Birla Group have remained largely unaffected, according to Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group.
“We have been pretty unscathed despite the fact that we have a presence across so many countries,” Birla said during an interactive session at the 190th Annual General Meeting of the Madras Chamber of Commerce & Industry in Chennai on Tuesday. He said the biggest impact of the geopolitical tensions has been the rise in fuel prices.
“In most cases, you know, very happily in some sense, we have been able to pass on that extra cost to our customers,” Birla said, attributing it to the benefits of onshoring, friend-shoring, and deep relationships with customers.
The Aditya Birla Group is a US$72 billion multinational conglomerate with interests spanning metals, cement, textiles, chemicals, financial services and telecom. The Group’s consolidated market capitalisation as of June 1 stood over US$118 billion, operating across 41 countries.
On challenges of scaling manufacturing share of GDP, Birla said it is not a challenge unique to India. He cited Hindalco Industries’ proposed US$6 billion aluminium recycling and rolling facility in Bay Minette, Alabama, saying the company had to change the project site because of environmental considerations.
“But we changed our site because of environmental considerations. I think it is pretty much similar across countries. It’s not like we’re the only people who have issues.”
Birla also recalled Hindalco’s US$6 billion acquisition of Novelis, a global leader in flat-rolled products and the world’s largest recycler of aluminium, in 2007, describing it as an “audacious proposition.”
“Novelis operated in 11 countries and generated revenues more than three times the size of Hindalco’s. But the strategic logic was compelling,” he recalled.
Birla said while Hindalco was an upstream aluminium producer, Novelis was the global leader in value-added downstream aluminium rolled products, used in automobiles, aerospace, beverage cans and other specialty applications, where margins are significantly higher than in upstream operations. The transaction helped Hindalco emerge as one of the world’s leading aluminium companies.
“More significantly, we would achieve overnight what would have taken us perhaps a decade and over tens of billions of dollars to build organically,” Birla said, underlining the Group’s long-term thinking and conviction.
Birla said UltraTech Cement’s journey is a good illustration of scale. “It took us 36 years to build our first 100 million tonnes of cement capacity. We added the next 100 million in less than seven. Today, at over 200 million tonnes, UltraTech is the largest cement company in the world outside China,” Birla said.
He added that the cement maker commissioned 24.3 MTPA of capacity and acquired another 26.3 MTPA during FY25 and FY26. UltraTech increased its operating cash flow by 50% in FY26. He said the performance reflected two decades of building a company capable of withstanding external shocks. “To me, that is the highest expression of scale.”