The rainmaker behind Mukesh Ambani’s $13-bn deal spree
He has no flashy titles and few outside India know him. But in the halls of Reliance Industries, Manoj Modi has quietly become a powerful force behind the corporate empire of Asia’s richest man.
Mostly invisible to the public, Modi is viewed by many insiders and others in India’s business world as the right hand of Mukesh Ambani. He played a key role during negotiations for a $5.7-billion deal with Facebook in April, backing Ambani and his children as they hashed out an agreement with the social networking giant, people familiar with the matter said.
As Ambani, 63, shifts his sprawling conglomerate’s focus from petrochemicals to internet technologies, Modi is seen as a particularly influential voice. Facebook’s investment in the group’s Jio Platforms was followed by similar deals from a slew of private equity funds, injecting $13 billion into the business and placing it firmly on Silicon Valley’s radar.
Modi is a director at Reliance Retail and the group’s telecom carrier Reliance Jio Infocomm. The 60-something, diminutive Modi — who isn’t related to Prime Minister Narendra Modi — rarely gives interviews, and there’s little in the public realm about his private life. Yet he illustrates how lesser known personalities with long-running ties to corporate dynasties can have an outsized impact.
A Reliance spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comments from the company and Modi.
“It'’s not a company that advertises its organisational structure but the industry knows that Ambani and Modi are a strongly-bonded team,” Vani Kola, managing director of Kalaari Capital Partners, said. Kola persuaded Modi to make a rare public appearance at a conference last year, albeit by video. There, he downplayed his skills. “I don’t really negotiate,” Modi said. “I don’t understand strategy. In fact, people internally know that I don’t even have a vision. I deal with our internal people, coaching them, mentoring them and guiding them on how something can be done.”
But then came a hint of his thinking: “Our principle at Reliance is simple: Unless everyone makes money while working with us, you cannot have a sustainable business.”
More than half-a-dozen executives in the tech industry, who have had dealings with Reliance, said Modi has a reputation for driving hard bargains. When dealing with start-ups, he often controls negotiations from behind the scenes by instructing executives how far to push, making an appearance nearing deal fruition, they said.
While Reliance’s mega investments have drawn the spotlight, the conglomerate also began an acquisition spree to buy smaller firms some years ago to build expertise in newer technologies. The idea is to create a digital business that wields power in everything from online retail to streamed entertainment and internet payments.
Often a meeting with him signals the final stamp of approval, four different start-up founders said. “He derives his power in the organisation not just because of his loyalty, but because of his very astute, smart and able negotiator skills,” G R Gopinath, founder of Air Deccan, who had sold a stake in his cargo airline to Reliance in 2010. “Though without formal education from Ivy League universities, he has a very sharp mind and a rare insight and native genius to grasp modern technology in the Indian context.”
Modi is one of the few who have been with the company since the 1980s when Ambani’s father was building the oil-andpetrochemicals giant. A few years earlier, Modi and Ambani had studied at what was then called the University Department of Chemical Technology in Mumbai and become fast friends.
That’s allowed Modi a chance to work with three generations of the Ambani dynasty: The late patriarch Dhirubhai, then Mukesh and his wife Nita, and now his children Isha and Akash, who are playing more prominent roles on deals like Facebook. Over the years Modi became known as the execution man, overseeing large projects. He broke new ground by managing Reliance’s retail reach to smaller cities and expanded it to India’s largest retailer. But it was with the pathbreaking telecom service that Ambani built up that Modi came into his own.
His negotiating skills were very visible when Jio raced to launch its wireless services in 2016 and built its fiber optic cable network. One of the people who participated in the negotiations described a scene where select vendors were summoned to the headquarters for talks. The bait dangled in front of each was the massive scale of the project. Unknown to vendors at that time, multiple Reliance teams negotiated simultaneously in separate rooms with Modi as the interface guiding executives, that person said.
These days, after crushing its rivals, Jio is the largest telecom operator in India with nearly 400 million users. It’s also increasingly important to global businesses like Facebook and Whatsapp as it serves as an entryway into an exploding digital economy and an ecommerce ecosystem. “Their work in expanding access to affordable mobile broadband has been phenomenal,” Ajit Mohan, vice-president and MD in India for Facebook, said of Ambani’s company.
In recent weeks, Jio’s investor list has included names like KKR, Silver Lake Partners, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. There may be more. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is in advanced talks for a stake, people familiar with the matter said this month.
Very little is known about the actual plans of Jio Platforms as the digital business rolls into the next phase of its expansion. Modi and his boss may have a joint hand in maintaining this level of secrecy.
“OUR PRINCIPLE AT RELIANCE IS VERY SIMPLE: UNLESS EVERYONE MAKES MONEY WHILE WORKING WITH US, YOU CANNOT HAVE A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS”
MANOJ MODI, Director, Reliance Retail and Reliance Jio Infocomm