The most populous city in India is home to the most valuable private home in the world – the Antilia Tower. Its building cost $ 1 billion, it is the apartment of the wealthiest man in Asia, Mukesh Ambani. In July, he exceeded the inventor of the Internet hypermarket Alibaba Jack Ma in the Bloomberg rating for $ 6 billion. Ambani’s fortune is $ 48 billion. He is 61 years old, resides with his family in Mumbai, and enjoys Bollywood movies. His personal life could grow the plot of an Indian melodrama because it comprises a heritage, a big fight with his brother, love, deceit, and reconciliation.
Family traditions
Father, Dhiburhai Ambani, who served as an administrator in a British port for many years, was able to save up a little money and begin his own company. He started in the spice and wool trade and later, in 1966, founded Reliance Industries and began to produce textiles and other fabrics. After 11 years, the factory became so large that it entered the stock exchange, and in the late 70s, it began producing polyester, a synthetic material that is obtained in the process of refining petroleum products.
Things continued to go up the hill. At the beginning 1980s, Mukesh Ambani, the most adult son in the family, followed his father and began working for the family business. By that time, he had finished his university education, got his degree in chemistry, and started his MBA at Stanford, but did not finish – he returned to India to assist manage the family business. An energetic young man persuaded his father to invest in the promising telecommunications market and build his refinery. In 2002, Ambani Sr. died without leaving a will. And later Mukesh’s younger brother, Anil, performed on the stage.
Strife
Anil Ambani also worked in the family business. Together with Mukesh, they carried the coffin with the body of their father. Later the burial, the eldest son matured chairman of the board of directors, and Anil took the chair of the vice president.
The brothers have always been very different. Mukesh is an industrial, secretive, conventional, freshly married school instructor whom his father looked after him. Anil is a friendly Westerner with free aspects and an interest in modern technologies. Till 1983, Anil studied at the Wharton School of Business in Pennsylvania, in 1991 he coupled with the popular Bollywood actress Tina Munim, the fiancée was three years older than the bridegroom.
Mukesh is a person who tries to manage everything under individual direction. It is what colleagues and partners say about him. In general, Ambani’s father favored the eldest son more than the youngest. In 1999, when Reliance Industries launched the telecom operator Reliance Infocomm, there was no photo or mention of the younger brother in the brochure dedicated to the launch of the ambitious project. Anil, probably, was outraged – for that presentation, for example, he did not come, but did not oppose the power of his brother. Sources close to him told India Today that the younger brother was ready to play a second role and was not going to encroach on the elder’s leadership. But when they started to relocate him from his profession, he was angry. Moreover, in their environment of Mukesh, there were immediately found cousins and nephews who wanted to become his right and left hands.
The brothers ceased interacting, Anil’s corporate phone was turned off, scandals and details of family disputes started to leak into the press, and the company’s quotes caused to fall. At that time, 13.48% was traded on the free market, 46.67% belonged to the Ambani family, and the rest was in the hands of foreign investors.
Finally, in 2005, the mother of the quarreling heirs convinced them to split the company. Mukesh took supervision of the oil refining activity and petrochemicals, as well as textile composition. Anil received projects related to telecommunications and electricity. For several more years, the brothers, by inertia, accused each other of certain projects, but in 2010 they finally parted completely – each led his part of the company in his direction.
Senior Ambani’s new projects
Mukesh proceeds to fasten in oil production and oil refining: he created a network of gas stations and made it to the stock market, selling a stake in one of the areas to British BP. The benefit of the enormous Reliance Industries has surpassed $ 100 billion.
In 2014, Mukesh got carried away with the idea of making a good internet in India accessible to everyone. He invested $ 33 million in the new company Reliance Jio and launched a free 4G network in 2015. A year later, he presented his smartphone LYF to the world – the device quickly, in just a few months, became the best-selling one in India.
In 2017, the billionaire’s unprecedented generosity dried up, the Internet became paid – Ambani initially warned that the company would serve subscribers for free for only seven months. By this time, more than 100 million people had joined Mukesh’s 4G network, and 72 million users returned to the company’s services on the day they were asked to do so.
It is not by chance that Mukesh has chosen the Internet as a new area of his interest. Over the past few years, he has been trying to look more modern and open to the world. He attends various events, sports, and culture, sponsors talented Indians, including grants to study at Stanford (from which he did not graduate), smiles more, and does charity work with the help of his wife Nita. India’s economy is changing, and Ambani does not want to fall out of the loop, remaining forever a grim oil oligarch. “Data is the new oil,” he says, and dreams of Jio leading the digitalization of all walks of life in India. In addition, he has a goal – to become the wealthiest person in the world.
