Asia’s new richest man! A business founded in 1966, becomes a success story for Mukesh Ambani

Almost everyone in India right from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Bollywood celebrities to investors, have high respect for 61-year old Mukesh Ambani. Ambani is seen as a idol among many Indian youths who plan to begin their own start-up company. It would not be wrong to say that following footsteps of Ambani can stir some history for anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur. Ambani has now made a new headline, and this time he is seen as the richest man in Asia, as per Bloomberg Index. Ambani has even outrun Jack Ma who is a founder of China’s largest e-commerce company Alibaba. The success and money that Ambani holds at the moment can be attributed to Reliance Industries who has been a game change almost in every sector. This company has turned out to be a very special one for India and can be said as too big to fail. Let’s know how RIL has become a success story for Ambani.

Asia’s new richest man! 

Riding on the back of RIL, Ambani’s fortune has risen to $44.3 billion, as per Bloomberg index. His wealth was driven by RIL who shares shot up to 1.7% on Friday with a fresh high of Rs 1,107.25 per piece on BSE. Meanwhile, Alibaba’s founder has a wealth of $44 billion by end of Thursday trading session in the US.

A $4 billion has been added in Ambani’s fortune so far in 2018, as RIL doubled its petrochemical capacity.

Not only this, Reliance is reaping the fruits of its newest company Reliance Jio. Ambani also announced his plans to leverage his 215 million telecom subscribers to expand his e-commerce offerings. Significantly, this year Ma lost $1.4 billion in wealth.

Mukesh Ambani

Ambani is a Chemical Engineer from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. He pursued an MBA from Stanford University in the US. He has been on the Board of Reliance since 1977. He initiated Reliance’s backward integration journey – from textiles to polyester fibres and further onto petrochemicals and petroleum refining, and going upstream into oil and gas exploration and production.

He is a son of late Dhirubhai Ambani who is considered as India's most prominent businessman and Kokila Ben Ambani.

Mukesh is a brother to Anil Ambani who heads Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group.

He is married to Nita Ambani who takes care of all the social and charitable work of Reliance Industries. He is a proud father of three children namely Akash, Isha and Anant.

Sculpting of Reliance Industries

RIL’s making is a very interesting story. This company was not formed by some highly educated man, but someone who had a dream to create history and had a sense of how business and money works. Dhirubhai Ambani was born on June 28, 1933 in Junagadh in the state of Gujarat, to an ordinary Modh family.

Dhirubhai was one of India’s greatest visionaries and iconic business tycoons. Through his RIL, he  introduced the Indian stock market to fully convertible debentures such as financially written. He was one of the first entrepreneurs to attract retail investors to the stock market.

However, running RIL was not a easy task for Dhirubhai, as the company had it's share of criticism. It was being known earlier that, critics alleged because of market capitalization, RIL's credit for the upliftment of Reliance Industries has been attributed to Dhirubhai's ability to manipulate the work from time to time, due to which he used the controlled economy for its benefit.

Late Dhirubhai Ambani founded Reliance in 1966. Ambani was seen to have a magical touch because his business turning was some stones into gold. Reliance is seen as a success story in not only private but also all over India Inc.

Though Reliance's main business is into oil, the company has entered into diversified sector in recent times. The company is divided in five key areas Petroleum exploration and production, Petroleum refining and marketing, Petrochemicals, Retail and Telecommunication.

Reliance Industries who was very special to Dhirubhai Ambani, saw its first major and shocking hurdle when his two son Mukesh and Anil decided to separate ways.

Right after 4 years of Dhirubhai Ambani’s death, Mukesh and Anil decided to divide RIL in 2006 because of differences between them. Their father died on July 06, 2002.

Mukesh’s RIL

After being separated with brother Anil who latter formed his own organisation though in the same name Reliance, Mukesh continued to operate under his father’s created company.He developed multiple new world-class manufacturing facilities involving diverse technologies that have raised Reliance’s petrochemicals manufacturing capacities from less than a million tonnes to about 21 million tonnes per year.

In the late nineties, Ambani spearheaded the creation of the world’s largest grassroots petroleum refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat, India, with a capacity of 660,000 barrels per day (33 million tonnes a year), and integrated it with petrochemicals, power generation, port and related infrastructure.

Further, he steered the setting up of another 580,000-barrels-per-day refinery next to the first one in Jamnagar. With an aggregate refining capacity of 1.24 million barrels of oil per day at a single location, Jamnagar has become the refining hub of the world.

He also led Reliance’s development of infrastructure facilities and implementation of a pan-India organized retail network spanning multiple formats and supply chain infrastructure. Today, Reliance Retail is the largest organised retail player in India. He has created global records in customer acquisition for Jio, Reliance’s digital services initiative. He led and established one of the world’s most expansive 4G broadband wireless network offering end-to-end solutions that address the entire value chain across various digital services in key domains of national interest, such as education, healthcare, security, financial services, government-citizen interfaces, and entertainment.

According to Wikipedia, if both brother were not separated and Mukesh remained a President, then his total wealth would be $ 85 billion, and he would be the richest man on earth, also from a large difference.

On stock market, 1 out of every 4 investors in India is a Reliance shareholder, as per the company's website. Reliance has over 3 lakh shareholders which makes it one of the largest stock organizers. The company has the second largest market cap of $100 billion on exchanges. From 2006 to till date, Reliance has given a massive 541% return on exchanges under Ambani's leadership.

Reliance was the only Indian company which was included in Forbes' 100 Most Honored Companies of the World list during September 2008.

Reliance's telecom industry Reliance Jio is next big thing for Ambani. RJio has already disrupted telecom sector with its cheap recharge packs, freebies and heavy data. Because of RJio, currently the telecom sector sees trend of tariff war, consolidation, low-budgeted packs. RJio has been getting on nerves of rivals like Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone and even state-owned BSNL who have been into business way before Ambani's new telecom arm.

According to 41st annual report, 215 million customers within 22 months of RJio’s start is a record that no technology company has been able to achieve anywhere in the world. In 22 months of RJio, data usage has grown from 125 crore GBs per month to more than 240 crore GBs per month.Voice usage on the network has grown from 250 crore minutes per day to more than 530 crore minutes per day. The amount of video consumption has grown from 165 crore hours per month to more than 340 crore hours per month.

It is quite clear Reliance Jio is the centre of focus for Reliance Industries among the other business.

As on March 2018, investment made in Reliance Jio stands at Rs 2,50,000 crore, while the consolidated turnover of RIL is about Rs 4,30,731 crore.Reliance Industries is now ranked among the world’s top 500 companies in terms of the revenue it generates. 

Hence, to sum it up, the 52-year old Reliance Industries is called as the success story of Mukesh Ambani.