Plot

The beginning of the film is set in 1951 in a small village of Idar in Sabarkantha district, northern Gujarat, where a young man named Gurukant Desai (Abhishek Bachchan) dreams of making it big someday. His father Kantilal (Rajendra Gupta), the headmaster of the village school, tells him not to dream and that dreams never come true. Guru has failed in school exams, and wants to do a job. Guru decides to go to Turkey and enter the spice trade, followed by a blue-collar job with Burmah Shell; later, he is promoted but refuses the job, as he wants to work for himself. Ghanshyam Das (Manoj Joshi) is Guru's mentor in Turkey and is sad to see him go back.

Guru returns to his village. He wants to start a business and has 15K seed money and needs another 15k to get started. He wants his friend Jignesh to convince his dad to invest. Jignesh says his dad Kaka (Sachin Khedekar) wont invest, but has 25K set aside for his sister's wedding. Guru marries Sujata (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), mainly because of the dowry she brings him. Along with Sujata and her brother Jignesh (Arya Babbar), Guru migrates to Bombay and wants to start trading in cloth. Guru soon finds that the traders association is a club and entry is controlled by Arzan Contractor (Arjan Bajwa), who is the president of the association. Guru meets Arzan, who promises to approve his application, but 4 months later rejects the same.

Guru is pissed and meets Manik Dasgupta on the streets by accident. Manik stays in the same building as Arzan and is a newspaper publisher. Mathura Das (Sudhir Pandey) is a fellow garment trader and is not very supportive of Guru taking on Arzan. Manik publishes an article on the monopoly that Arzan has on the traders union. Arzan resigns. Guru gets his trading permit and opens an office. Guru starts trading in Polyester when the country is used to Cotton only. Arzan gets the govt to lock up the trading market, alleging that it is gambling. Guru meets IAS officer KR Menon (Prathap K. Pothan), who passed this order. He forces Menon to open the markets by putting all the garment raw material at his house. Menon thinks his higher ups will think he has taken a bribe. Mathura Das starts liking Guru. Gradually, he expands his business and sets up manufacturing units of his own, under the name "Shakti Corporation".

"Nanaji" Manik Dasgupta (Mithun Chakraborty), who publishes a newspaper "Swatantra" ("The Independent"), treats Guru as his son. Guru likewise looks upon him as a father figure who supported him during his early days of struggle in Bombay. He also develops a strong friendship with Meenu (Vidya Balan), granddaughter of Nanaji. Meenu develops multiple sclerosis as she grows up, and begins using a wheelchair.

Guru wants to take Shakti public with an IPO, but Jignesh is offended as Guru didn't counsel with him before making this decision. He tells Sujata that Guru married her just for the dowry money. Jignesh and Sujata both return home. Eventually after a few months Guru goes to get Sujata back and she forgives him. As Guru sets up the factory, Ghanshyam joins him. In a few yrs Guru has a sprawling empire. Arzan's father (Dhritiman Chatterjee) approaches Guru and offers to buy the entire company, but Guru refuses. Guru is pissed and exposes the Contractor family by printing in all newspapers how Contractors are looting India with old machines and sub-standard garment material. Guru uses Manik's newspaper in his absence, when he was away from India. when Manik returns, he realizes that Guru has bribed everyone on his staff.

As Guru's business grows into one of the largest in India, he ruthlessly pursues success. He smuggles machine parts for his polyester mills (He produces 55K tonnes against a permission of 23K tonnes. To double production, he brought 6 additional spinning lines into the country as spare parts, without paying import duty on them), illegally creates goods (he showed fake exports to get a polyester import license which had a 700% profit margin), and manipulates stocks (By buying his own stock at higher prices to manipulate valuations) to make a higher profit. But when Nanaji learns that Guru's means of success are not always honest, he, along with a reporter of his newspaper, Shyam Saxena (Madhavan), decides to expose Guru's increasingly corrupt ways (he bribes a Union Minister to get permission for his first Petro chemicals factory). Meanwhile Sujata is pregnant and gives birth to twins.

Ghanshyam is the director of Guru's garment factory. When Shyam publishes his article on illegal production and import duty non payment, Ghanshyam tries to commit suicide. Guru's shareholders turn against him and label him a smuggler and a thief. The stress of his battle with the newspaper causes Guru to have a stroke, and he is paralyzed on his right side. Meanwhile, Meenu, who is now married to Shyam, is slowly weakening from her illness, and eventually dies.

In the end, Guru is brought before a government inquiry on 16 October 1980 to defend himself against the charges pressed against him, but tells the press in next day that he was an ordinary villager who didn't even understand the meaning of excise duty, customs, sales tax. All he knew was his business. But the corrupt system made sure that a villager doesn't become a rich businessman. As a result, he had to indulge in corrupt practices.

This forces the government to clear him of 27 of the 29 charges against him. He is charged with a fine of Rs 6.3 million (equivalent to Rs 100 million or US$1.6 million in 2016) and Rs 96,000 (equivalent to Rs 1.6 million or US$24,000 in 2016) for the respective two charges, which are proved and is allowed to return to his company.

The movie ends with Guru telling Shakti's shareholders that his father was proven wrong as he said dreams don't turn true, but they all are now a part of India's largest company. Guru asks them if they should stop. Shareholders refuse and resolve to be the largest company in the world instead.