Anil Agarwal on Globalization

To tap international capital, Agarwal incorporated Vedanta Resources Plc in London in 2003, becoming the first Indian firm to list on the London Stock Exchange (December 10, 2003). The listing vehicle then became the group's parent through internal restructuring — an unusual inversion that placed India-heavy assets under a UK-listed holding company.

The official positioning also highlights Agarwal's reputation as the first Indian to list a business at the London Stock Exchange — a fact the company foregrounds in his profile — and his self-described founding ethos captured in the line 'You must dream to make your dreams come true,' which the corporate site uses as a tagline.

Vedanta expanded geographically throughout the 2000s: Konkola Copper Mines in Zambia (2004), a controlling stake in Sesa Goa iron ore (2007), Anglo American's zinc assets in Namibia, Ireland and South Africa (2010), and Cairn India — India's largest private-sector oil producer — in 2011. Sesa Goa and Sterlite were merged in 2012 to consolidate group structure.

In October 2017 Volcan Holdings Plc, Agarwal's personal vehicle, took a 19% stake in Anglo American, making him the mining major's largest shareholder — a quiet move that surprised the market and signaled Agarwal's ambition to engage with global mining incumbents rather than just compete with them.

Agarwal dismissed Brexit risk to Vedanta, arguing that an independent UK with strong legal and trading infrastructure would remain a comfortable base for global business. His family, he noted, held British passports and had supported Brexit — a position that underscored his comfort with London as Vedanta's headquarters despite the group's asset base remaining overwhelmingly Indian.

The post-merger Cairn India-Vedanta entity was positioned as the world's fourth-largest natural resources company after BHP, Rio Tinto and Glencore. Agarwal noted that 78% of revenue came from India, the remainder from Zambia, South Africa and Namibia — a deliberately India-heavy portfolio that he argued would tilt further toward India after the planned investments.

Agarwal attributed his global breakthrough to a single Tasmanian acquisition: the management of a copper mine had speculated in the metals market and gone bust, and he rushed to Tasmania to buy the mine for $2.5 million. It has since returned roughly $100 million a year. Other early overseas picks included a small Queensland mine and a gold mine in Armenia — opportunistic bets made under India's then-tight foreign-exchange rules.