"I owe my success and achievements to the affection, friendship and trust of millions of my employees, customers, shareholders and business associates, who have stood by me and been a major source of strength all along," Dhirubhai Ambani said after being named as the businessman of the century by the magazine.

The magazine hails Ambani as representing Asian business at its best - bold, visionary, technologically-minded and entrepreneurically daring.

The result of the poll will feature in the forthcoming issue of the magazine, a release issued by the Reliance group said. The poll, which received over 41,000 valid votes from as far away as North America and Australia, selected Ambani, the leading industrialist from India, as the leader from a list of 10 nominations.

Ambani received the maximum number of votes, that is 10,142 at around 25 per cent of the total votes polled. The feature compares his achievements to some of the greatest business initiatives in the industrial history of the world.

The magazine also compares Ambani with the runner-up JRD Tata. Comparison are odious but in their own way JRD and Dhirubhai are giants of equal stature.

Dhirubhai is a meticulous accretioner of companies.

He is an executioner of dreams so big which others were afraid to even dream of. Dhirubhai, however, made them a reality.

The feature identifies four qualities of Ambani, as underlying his blistering climb to the top - self-reliance, speed, size and sales.

He built a 10,000 tonnes per annum plant with a built-in provision for a further 15,000 tonnes when the entire Indian output of polyester filament yarn was only 6,000 tonnes per annum.

His vision was also reflected in his pioneering equity cult in India and developing capital markets, the release said. Talking about the future growth of Reliance, Ambani said, in the early 2000s the Reliance group will emerge as a net forex earner with multifold growth in exports and will be the top manufacturer-exporter from India. Despite the turbulent 90s, Reliance stood like a rock, defying recession and petrochemical prices.

The poll conducted and featured by Business Barons collected votes through different mediums from distributed to corporate managers. Forms were attached to the magazine and responses received electronically on themagazine's website, which extended its reach to a large number of votes in India and all over the world.

The multimedia survey required that all participants over the Internet disclose their identities while sending their response.