INDIA'S richest man is often seen in photos wearing a suit.
But that's because the photos in the public domain are often taken during official functions.
Mr Mukesh Ambani, the head of Reliance Industries, prefers a white short-sleeved shirt, black trousers and black shoes.
He thinks big.
He is building the world's biggest refinery and the world's most expensive home - a 27-storey structure in Mumbai.
So it comes as a surprise, that the New York Times (NYT) recently compared the 51-year-old shrewd businessman to India's founding father, Mahatma Gandhi.
'In the last century, Mahatma Gandhi was the most famous and powerful private citizen in India. Today, Ambani is widely regarded as playing that role, though in a very different way,' the newspaper's correspondent wrote.
Mahatma Gandhi and Mr Ambani are from Gujarat and from the same bania caste. Both are teetotalers and vegetarians.
But while the Mahatma was an ascetic and a champion of the village, MrAmbani is 'an oligarch, a champion of the city, a burier of the past and a man who deftly - and, some critics say, ruthlessly - wields financial power'.
Mr Ambani is upbeat about a resurgent India. He told NYT: 'Can we really banish abject poverty in this country? Yes, in 10, 15 years we can say we would have done that substantially. Can we make sure that we create a social structure where we remove untouchability? We're fast moving to a new India where you don't think about this caste and that caste,' he added.
He envisions Reliance, with US$39 billion ($53b) in revenue, as providing incomes to 12 million to 30 million Indians within the next five years by buying from farmers and employing new workers in its stores.
LEGENDARY APPETITE
He is known for his legendary appetite, but his tastes are simple.
The NYT reported that he has been known to walk out of fancy restaurants in search of thosais sold by the roadside.
'Personally, I still have to eat my dal, roti, chaval,' he said, using the Hindi words for lentil soup, flatbread and rice. 'I just have not developed those tastes.'
The Stanford-educated Mr Ambani recalls 'a lot of emulation' of Western ways surrounding him as a child.
'My view was: 'What the hell, man! We can do what we feel like.' I think what has changed now, and it is changing in multiple generations, is this self-confidence and self-belief.'
Said one of his admirers, MrNandan Nilekani, co-chairman of Infosys Technologies, a leading outsourcing company in India: 'If you look at his interests, they're very rooted in India. He's not trying to impress anyone else.'
MrAmbani's wealth is relatively new. His father, MrDhirubhai Ambani, started the company in 1958 in a tiny office in Mumbai, first exporting spices to Yemen, then entering the yarn trade.
As the eldest son, he helped oversee the company's diversification into petrochemicals, then energy, then cellphones.
His father made him a board member at the age of 17 or 18, he said. And because he was involved with Reliance when it was 'just a textile company', he said he has always felt that he built it with his father, rather than simply inherited it.
'My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation,' he said. 'He treated me like a partner, saying, 'Okay, let's go do this.' And more than that, he gave me the full freedom, the ability to bet the house.'
After his father's death six years ago, he fell out with younger brother Anil.
The company was divided. MrMukesh Ambani kept the oil, gas and petrochemicals businesses of the group flagship Reliance Industries. The younger brother got Reliance Energy, one of India's biggest power utility firms, the phone company and finance arm Reliance Capital.
MrMukesh Ambani's vision is to turn India's weakness on its head.
If manufacturing remains small-scale and fragmented, let it stay that way, he said.
'The next big thing is how do you create manufacturing with decentralised employment,' he said. 'The Chinese have got very disciplined top-down systems. We have our bottom-up creative systems.
'How do you really bring about, in a country of a billion people, the individuality of every single individual?
'How do you make sure that you create systems that empower everybody and bring them to their true potential? This is what actually Gandhi taught us.'
He added: 'The optimistic part to me is that now these goals look achievable.'