How Mukesh built the fortune
Ambani's wealth derives from his family's holding in Reliance Industries, India's largest private sector company by revenue and market value for much of the past decade. The promoter group, led by Ambani, owns about half of the company through a network of holding entities. Reliance was started by his father, Dhirubhai Ambani, as a yarn trading business, so the foundation of the fortune was inherited, but the scale of today's group is largely the result of investments Mukesh Ambani directed.
In the 1980s and 1990s he oversaw the company's move backward along the supply chain, from textiles into polyester fibers, petrochemicals and finally oil refining. The Jamnagar complex in Gujarat, first commissioned at the end of the 1990s and expanded later, grew into the world's largest refining site and gave Reliance a strong export business in fuels. These cash-generating assets funded the next phase.
That phase was consumer businesses. Reliance Jio, launched in 2016 with free voice calls and very cheap data, upended the Indian mobile market and became the country's largest carrier within a few years. At the same time Reliance Retail grew into the largest retailer in India. In 2020 the company sold minority stakes in its digital and retail units to investors including Meta, Google and several sovereign funds, raising large sums and highlighting their value.
Companies and holdings
The Reliance group today includes:
- Oil to chemicals: the Jamnagar refineries and petrochemical plants
- Jio Platforms: mobile, broadband and digital services, with stakes held by Meta and Google
- Reliance Retail: grocery, electronics and fashion stores and online shopping
- JioStar: a media company formed in 2024 by merging Reliance's entertainment assets with Disney's Indian business
- New energy: large investments in solar panel, battery and green hydrogen manufacturing in Gujarat
The Ambani family also owns the Mumbai Indians cricket franchise. His three children now hold leading roles: Akash chairs the telecom arm, Isha leads retail, and Anant is involved in the energy businesses.
Ambani remains chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries. Investors have long expected the group to list Jio and Reliance Retail as separate companies, and he has told shareholders that a Jio listing is planned, a move that could set a public market value on the businesses he built over the past decade.
Early life and career
Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani was born in April 1957 in Aden, then a British colony, where his father worked for a trading company. The family returned to India soon after and lived in modest circumstances in Mumbai while Dhirubhai built his business. Mukesh earned a degree in chemical engineering from the University Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai and enrolled in an MBA program at Stanford University, but he left in 1981 to help his father set up a polyester plant.
After Dhirubhai Ambani died in 2002 without a written will, a public dispute arose between Mukesh and his younger brother Anil over control of the group. Their mother brokered a settlement in 2005. Mukesh kept Reliance Industries, with its refining and petrochemical businesses, while Anil took the telecom, power and financial services companies. The two paths diverged sharply in the years that followed, as Mukesh's businesses grew while several of Anil's companies ran into heavy debt.
Philanthropy and public life
The Reliance Foundation, chaired by his wife, Nita Ambani, is the group's main charitable arm. It works on rural development, health care, education, sports and disaster response, and it runs hospitals and schools including the Sir H. N. Reliance Foundation Hospital in Mumbai. Indian law requires large companies to spend part of their profits on social programs, and much of the foundation's funding comes through that channel.
Ambani lives in Antilia, a high-rise private residence in south Mumbai that has drawn wide attention for its size. The family's events, including the 2024 wedding celebrations of his youngest son, attracted global celebrities and heads of business. Ambani rarely gives interviews but sets out the group's plans at Reliance's annual shareholder meetings, which are closely watched by investors in India.