According to ABN website ..

As Dr. Bharat Singh, Managing Director, says, "Aditya Birla Nuvo is a business builder. We nurture promising businesses, putting a hand on their shoulders, giving them finances, manpower and all other support to help them grow, flower, bloom and then stand on their own feet."

Birla did lots of reorganization into business and brought togther bunch of companies to form what's called Aditya Birla Nuvo.

Here is look at some of the major companies in their portfolio. Probably we will recognize some of them

    * Viscose Filament Yarn — Indian Rayon
    * Garments — Madura Garments
    * Carbon Black — Hi-Tech Carbon
    * Agri solutions — Indo Gulf Fertilisers
    * Textiles — Jaya Shree Textiles
    * Insulators — Aditya Birla Insulators

Subsidiaries

    * Life Insurance
    * Business Process Outsourcing — Aditya Birla Minacs Worldwide Limited
    * Software services — PSI Data Systems Limited
   
* Financial services — Birla Global Finance Company Limited,
    * Garments — Madura Garments Lifestyle Retail Company Limited, Peter England Fashions

Joint ventures

    * Telecom — Idea Cellular Limited
    * Asset management — Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company Limited

That's a broad variety of business segments and sectors. Some of the key one I like are Indo Gulf Fertilizer, Madura Garments,  Birla Global Finance and Sunlife insurance JV.

While this is as good as buying a mutual fund in itself. If you buy and own ABN you are very much diversified from retail to telecom.  The biggest challenge in such diversified company is finding proper value of business. The matter gets more complicated when JV and subsidiary are involved.

By looking at statement from MD it looks like they are trying to be business incubator. Current Market cap of ABN is 9000 Cr.