MUKESH AMBANI

( THE RISE OF A BILLIONAIRE )

 

Mukesh Ambani is a Managing Director and largest shareholder, (holding 44.7% shares), of Reliance Industries Limited. This is a Fortune Global 500 company and India’s most valuable company by its market value. În 2020, he has been ranked 5th in the latest world billionaires list by Forbes with a net worth of $44.3 billion. He has been India’s richest person on the Forbes list ever since 2016. His telecom venture Jio Infocom became India’s biggest telecommunication company in terms of net worth and users.

 

Early Life and Education :-

Mukesh Ambani was born on 19th April, 1957 to Dhirubhai Ambani and Kokilaben Ambani in Aden, Yemen, where his father was working. He has a younger brother, Anil Ambani and two sisters. He lived only briefly in Yemen because his father decided to move back to India in 1958 to start-a trading business that focused on spices and textiles. Later on these textiles were branded as ‘Only Vimal. Mukesh attended school in Mumbai and then completed his BE degree in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology.

 

Career :-


Mukesh had enrolled for an MBA at Stanford University, USA, but withdrew in 1980 to help his father build Reliance Industries Ltd, which at that time was still a small but fast-growing enterprise. Thus, he started his career by helping his father establish a synthetic yarn manufacturing company. In the wake of joining the business, Mukesh assumed a vital role in developing the business legacy and entered into new areas.

Under his initiative, Reliance commercial enterprises made an incredible accomplishment into various divisions such as petroleum refining, petrochemicals and gas investigation. He additionally set up Reliance Infocomm Ltd, which included products and services in the retail and telecommunication industries.

He led Reliance’s backward integration, in which companies own their suppliers to generate more revenue and improve efficiency in 1981 from textiles into polyester fibres and further into petrochemicals from which the yarns were made.

Dhirubhai Ambani, his father, treated him as a business partner, allowing him the freedom to contribute even with little experience. Thus, at the age of 24, Mukesh was given charge of the construction of the Patalganga petrochemical plant where the company was heavily investing in oil refining and petrochemicals.

When Dhirubhai suffered a stroke in 1986, all the responsibility shifted to Mukesh and his brother Anil. After his father died in 2002, he was given controlling interest in Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited (IPCL), while his brother Anil got controlling interest in the telecom business of Reliance. He subsequently created the world’s largest grassroots petroleum refinery at Jamnagar, which had the capacity to refine 660,000 barrels of crude oil per day (33 million tonnes per year) in 2010, integrated with petrochemicals, power generation, a port and related infrastructure. He was termed the World’s Richest Sports Team Owner’ after he purchased the

 

IPL cricket team named Mumbai Indians for US $111.9 million in 2008 :-

He started RIL’s venture in the Infocomm sector in 2016 by starting Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, which later absorbed Reliance’s original telecom venture, which had earlier been controlled by his brother. It was an immediate success due to the innovative schemes it offered to customers.

 

Personal Life :-

He married Nita Ambani in 1985, who takes an active part in the social and charitable aspects of his company’s business. They have two sons, Anant and Akash, and a daughter, Isha. Both the sons are being groomed to gradually take over the control of the business from their father. They live in a 27-storey mansion Antilia in the heart of Mumbai valued at over US $1 billion. It was the most expensive residence in the world at the time it was built in 2010.

 

His Awards and Honours :-

Due to his entrepreneurship, he has received a large number of awards and honours. The first one was in the year 2000, when he was given the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. In 2010, he won a large number of awards and honours which included

 

• Global Vision Award by the Asia Society.

 • Business Leader of the Year by NDTV India.

• Businessman of the Year by the Financial Chronicle.

• Global Leadership Award by the Business Council for International LInderstanding.

• Honorary Doctorate (Doctor of Science) by MS University, Baroda.

        

In 2013, he was conferred with the title of Millennium Business Leader of the Decade’ at the India Leadership Conclave. In 2016, he was awarded the Othmer Gold Medal by the Chemical Heritage Foundation in the USA.