MUKESH AMBANI
Chairman & MD, RELIANCE INDUSTRIES
MUKESH AMBANI,63 The 1991 reforms enabled Mukesh to fulfil his father Dhirubhai Ambani’s dream of Indians building world-class and worldscale businesses. Mukesh went on to build Reliance Industries Limited into India’s most valued company, at $172 billion, and made it a market leader in several key sectors
Someone like Mukesh Ambani, whose Reliance Industries Limited is the most valued business conglomerate in India, with a market capitalisation of $172 billion (Rs 12.72 lakh crore) and whose personal net worth of $86 billion (Rs 6.3 lakh crore) makes him India’s richest individual, is bound to have experienced several turning points. Pinpointing a single life-changing moment may be a difficult proposition for him.
It could well have been early in life when his father Dhirubhai Ambani ran a trading business in spice and textiles first in Aden (where Mukesh was born) and then in Mumbai. His family, including his parents, brother and two sisters, first lived in a modest, two-bedroom apartment in Bhuleshwar before moving to the upmarket Usha Kiran complex on Carmichael Road. Mukesh reportedly loved the sense of community and camaraderie these apartments offered and was in and out of his neighbours’ houses even as he attended a local school. These experiences perhaps enabled him to stay rooted in reality even as he achieved an exalted status later in life. (He still enjoys the simple pleasure of eating street food, particularly idli-sambar).
Or it could have been a decade later in life when, after obtaining a degree in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) in Mumbai, he flew to Stanford University to enrol for an MBA programme in 1980. After earning his qualifications, he intended to intern at the
World Bank or possibly teach in a university. But even before he could complete the course, Dhirubhai called him back to help build the Patalganga petrochemicals complex including a polyester-filament yarn plant, and to subsequently expand it. He wanted Mukesh back because he felt the best way to acquire skills was to work in the trenches. Mukesh won praise from his peers for being willing to rough it out at the project site, sleeping in trailers. He also showed a keen eye for detail even as he kept the big picture in focus and completed the project on schedule. In an interview to the New York Times, he recalled, “My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first generation. He treated me like a partner, saying ‘Ok. Let’s do this.’ More than that, he gave me the full freedom and ability to bet the house.”
That experience should have gone down in anyone’s book as the turning point for success. But not for Mukesh. Nor the bitter family feud with his younger brother, Anil, after Dhirubhai died in 2002. As the battle for control of the Reliance Group heightened between the siblings, their mother, Kokilaben, had to intervene to settle it in 2005. As part of the settlement, Mukesh was given control of the group’s industrial businesses and Anil was handed newer ones like telecommunications, power plants and financial services. Those who know Mukesh well say he has left the demerger far behind and built a totally new company from what it was when the split happened.
Surprisingly, Mukesh does not even regard expanding Reliance’s Jamnagar plant into the world’s largest greenfield oil refining and petrochemical complex in 2008 as the moment that saw him truly come into his
own. The state-of-the-art $6 billion facility has turned out to be one of Reliance Industries’ most profitable ventures. However, far from resting on his laurels, Mukesh almost simultaneously began diversifying Reliance from the core sectors of refining and petrochemicals to retail and telecom and, more recently, as a technology company, led by Jio Platforms Limited (JPL). Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, Mukesh struck a series of deals to raise Rs 1.45 lakh crore in investments in JPL from the likes of Google and Facebook, apart from a host of private equity firms and wealth funds. That his retail and telecom businesses have become highly profitable could have been another singular turning point in his life. Yet, Mukesh does not give it the honour.
Instead, of all these momentous events, he tells india today, “the turning point in my life, indeed, in the life of Reliance, came in the early 1990s when India boldly embraced economic reform. Liberalisation freed the suppressed entrepreneurial energies in our country. My father, Dhirubhai Ambani, had been championing such reforms for a long time because he firmly believed that the Indian private sector had the potential to build world-class and world-scale businesses capable of creating prosperity on a large scale. I assisted him in putting this “hum kisi se kum nahin” spirit into action, and Reliance has never looked back since.”
For Reliance, the opening up of the Indian economy could not have come at a more opportune moment. Over the years, it had built a global level of competitiveness into its operations to take on any challenges from foreign firms. These reforms also helped it tap into global financial markets. Among other things, it became the first Indian company to launch a global depository receipts issue. These investments then fuelled the phenomenal expansion of Reliance companies across key sectors for the next two decades. Mukesh is optimistic about the future, and says, “I believe that today’s young entrepreneurs, armed with the same spirit but also aided by the revolutionary power of digital and new technologies, can achieve a lot more in terms of wealth with welfare for 1.3 billion Indians.”
Mukesh also believes that apart from the right planning, what the country needs is to get the execution and delivery right. At the 2017 India Today Conclave, he said, “If we think that the bureaucracy is an obstacle, technology is the best way to overcome it. So, to my mind, with e-governance, with what we are seeing on Jio in terms of how one can create transparency for citizens and serve them, once that becomes a movement by itself, then people will force us to change our systems. The India of today is changing very fast and this pace will only accelerate, as the younger generation is very impatient.” He then went on to add, “We have a historic opportunity in front of us. We need to get out of the old mindset of aap yeh teen-chaar cheez pehle karo, uske baad main sochta hoon (do these three or four things first, then I’ll think about it)’. We just need to deliver without making excuses.”
So, what does money mean to him? “Nothing really,” says Mukesh. “My father always told me that if you start anything just to make money, then you are a fool because you will never make any money and you will not be a billionaire. But if you start something with a purpose and if your purpose is to be the best in the world, to do what nobody else has done, then money is a byproduct and that byproduct should never be important. He also taught me that dreams are something you don’t have when you sleep, they are what keep you awake. And make you think again and again till you convert those dreams into a passion. And if you are passionate about something, it will define your own purpose.” It is apparent that Mukesh continues to follow his father’s advice on such matters. ■
“My father used to say that if you do something to make money, then you are a fool. But if you want to start something for a purpose, then money will be just a byproduct”