Page 56 - Forbes - USA (March 2018)

TH E WORLDÕ S BILLIO NA IR E S

a
MuKeSH MBanI was pointedly not invited to the Reliance Family Day bash in
December.

est company in the world, having earned some $4.6 billion in Their father, Dhirubhai Ambani, was born to a poor

profits last year on $50.9 billion in sales. The firm is a major schoolteacher and grew up in a remote village not far from

player in oil and gas and operates one of the largest oil refiner- Porbandar, the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi. Dhirubhai

ies in the world. It is the largest retailer in India and has impor- never finished high school, quitting to help support the fam-
tant ventures in life sciences, textiles and telecommunications. ily. He spent seven years working in a gas station in Yemen—
Its Network18 media subsidiary has partnerships with promi- where Mukesh was born in 1957—before returning to India to
nent Western brands like CNBC, CNN, MTV and Nickelodeon set up a spice-trading business with his brothers from a tiny

(television), Paramount Pictures (film) and Forbes (print). 500-square-foot Mumbai office. Then in the 1960s, the siblings
But what really has Ambani excited—and has set Reli- expanded into yarn and began importing a new wonder fab-
ance’s share price on fire—is his $33 billion investment in Jio, ric, polyester.

a 4G broadband service that has attracted 160 million custom- By 1966 the “Prince of Polyester” had built his first synthet-

ic textile mill in his native Indian state of Gujarat. The entre-

preneur persevered through stifling bureaucracy and endem-
ic corruption until, in 1977, when India’s nationalized banks

refused to finance further expansion, he took Reliance public.

The offering was marketed to middle-class Indians and heavi-

ly oversubscribed. The 58,000 mostly small-town Indians who
decided to gamble wouldn’t regret it. Over the coming years,
the shares appreciated sharply, placing Dhirubhai firmly on

the path to an eventual $6.6 billion fortune as he expanded
into petrochemicals, refining and oil-and-gas exploration.

“My father foresaw that India could become globally com-

petitive and always thought in terms of scale. That became the
DNA of Reliance,” Ambani says from the company’s 36-year-

old downtown offices, sur-
not his brother’s keeper: siblings Mukesh (right) and Anil Ambani at a
Reliance shareholders’ meeting in 2004. rounded by images of his late
Hypergrowth father, including a superrealistic
ers since it was introduced 18 months ago. More than half those has added 3-D-printed bust.

subscribers signed up in the first six months, when Reliance $16.9 billion In 1986, when Dhirubhai

jump-started the business by offering the service for free. They to Ambani’s suffered a stroke, Mukesh and

stayed because Jio has promised never to charge for domes- fortune in the Anil took more responsibility.
tic calls and its data rates are supercheap. That hypergrowth has The brothers were tight. They

boosted Reliance’s stock by over 70% in the past year and added past year. worked side by side during the
$16.9 billion to Ambani’s fortune. Analysts call it the “Jio effect.” day, and their families lived to-

But for Ambani, Jio is about more than adding 11 figures to gether on different floors of a

his net worth. He believes the firm is igniting a subcontinental 14-story family-owned high-

data revolution that will help solve some of India’s intractable rise. By the time Dhirubhai died in 2002 at age 69 from a sec-
problems in areas like agriculture, education and health care. ond stroke, Reliance was India’s largest family business and

“Can Jio be the first company to transform an entire nation arguably its most influential.

in each one of these sectors?” Ambani continues, whipping up Before his death, Dhirubhai had been keen to start a mobile-
the crowd. “Yes, we can! And, yes, we will!” phone service for the masses that would provide voice calls for
Or as he sometimes says more succinctly, “Data is the new oil.” less than the cost of a postcard. At the time mobile phones were
toys for the rich, with expensive monthly fees. Inspired by their
MUKESH AMBANI IS PROBABLY best known outside India for father’s dream, the brothers jumped into mobile telephony.
building the world’s most expensive privately owned home, a “Some of us are bigger risk-takers than others,” Mukesh
27-story sky palace that looms above South Mumbai and cost says. “Without taking some risk, there is no fun in life.”

an estimated $1 billion. There, with his wife, Nita, a member Reliance started a discount telecom service in 2002, shak-
of the International Olympic Committee and the chair of one ing up the market and sending mobile rates tumbling from 32
of India’s premier soccer leagues, he frequently entertains lu- cents a minute to 2 cents. But behind that success an ugly bat-
minaries from the worlds of sport, fashion and entertainment. tle was brewing as the brothers began fighting for control of

“I have just one home,” he says somewhat defensively, “not 30 the company.
or 40 around the world, as some do.” Dhirubhai died unexpectedly, without a will, but the un-
But within India, Ambani is equally well-known for his derstanding within the family—at least as Mukesh saw it—was AFP/GETTY IMAGES
dec adelong blood feud with his younger brother, Anil, 58, who that whoever was chairman of Reliance (conveniently it was
54 | FORBES MARCH 31, 2018