The story of Rial and Dhirubhai Ambani

Early in the 1950s, officials in the treasury of the Arabian kingdom of Yemen noticed something unusual happening to their country’s currency. The main unit of money, a solid silver coin called the Rial, was disappearing from their circulation. They traced the disappearing coins south to the trading port of Aden, which was a British colony and military bastion commanding the entrance to the Red Sea and southern approaches to the Suez Canal. Inquiries found that an Indian clerk named Dhirubhai Ambani, who was then barely into his 20s had an open order out in the marketplace of Aden for as many Rials as they were available. Ambani had noted that the value of the Rial’s silver content was higher than its exchange value against the British pound and other foreign currencies. So he set on his journey to begin buying Rials as much as he could get his hands on, melt them down and sell the silver ingots to bullion dealers in London. ‘The margins were small, but it was money for jam,’ Dhirubhai later reminisced. After three months he was stopped, but he made a few lakhs of rupees at that time. That's one smart Indian hacking the system!