India’s richest man throws lavish wedding

Los Angeles Times

NEW DELHI—A private performance by pop superstar Beyonce at a $1,000-a-night lakeside resort. Two former secretaries of state grooving awkwardly on the dance floor. A guest list that looked like India’s version of an Oscars red carpet.

This isn’t just a big fat Indian wedding; it’s the biggest, fattest wedding anyone in India can remember.

The marriage of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s daughter Isha has had Indians, and many Americans, awestruck for nearly a week and spawned estimates of a $100 million price tag.

Isha, a 27-year-old Yale graduate, married her childhood friend Anand Piramal at a lavish ceremony Wednesday at her family’s 27-story, custom-built residence in the heart of Mumbai where the roads were bedecked with garlands.

Her father, Mukesh, is chairman of Reliance Industries, a sprawling business conglomerate with interests in petrochemicals, energy, textiles and retail—and one of the world’s largest internet service providers. Forbes estimates his net worth at more than $40 billion, putting him among the world’s 20 richest people.

The bridegroom, 33-year-old Piramal, comes from a family that made a fortune in pharmaceuticals and real estate, with a net worth estimated at $4 billion.

While Indians of all social classes go all out for weddings, the Ambani nuptials have set a new standard for over-the-top opulence—a mark of the oligarchs who have become unimaginably wealthy in India’s three-decade rise from a sleepy quasi-socialist state to one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies.