Bigger, Faster, Better; India's top tycoon hopes to kick the country's nascent boom into hyperdrive by remaking its stores, farms and even its biggest cities.(Mukesh Ambani)

Byline: Ron Moreau and Sudip Mazumdar

Mukesh Ambani has been India's Mr. Big for a long time. By all accounts, he is the country's most influential private citizen, and the businessman who thinks bigger than the rest in this rising economic superpower. He was all that even before a bitter internal feud led to a split in his family conglomerate. The breakup, finalized in January, left Mukesh in control of the larger (and largely petrochemical) share, Reliance Industries, and that behemoth has seen its fortunes soar ever since. It is now India's largest private-sector enterprise by any measure: revenue ($20 billion in 2005), profit ($2 billion), or share of Indian ...