Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest person, has become the newest member of the centi-billionaires club, joining ranks with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk in the elite league of billionaires whose fortune has crossed the $100 billion threshold.
Ambani, the Chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd. is India’s leading entrepreneur with investments in many sectors. According to Bloomberg, his conglomerate’s stock hit a new height on Friday, propelling his entry into the 11-men club. He’s now worth $100.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after his wealth increased by $23.8 billion this year.
Bloomberg highlighted Ambani’s fortune, starting from about 15 years ago, how he transformed his late father’s business empire into one of the most lucrative conglomerates in the world.
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Since inheriting the oil-refining and petrochemicals businesses of his late father’s empire in 2005, Ambani, 64, has been seeking to transform the energy giant into a retail, technology and e-commerce titan. His telecommunications unit, which started services in 2016, is now the dominant carrier in the Indian market. His retail and technology ventures raised about $27 billion last year, selling stakes to investors ranging from Facebook Inc. and Google to KKR & Co. and Silver Lake.
Ambani unveiled an ambitious push into green energy in June, with a planned investment of about $10 billion over three years. And last month, the mogul said his company would “aggressively” pursue production of cheaper green hydrogen. The plan aligns with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitions of turning India into a global manufacturing hub for the cleaner fuel to combat climate change and slash energy imports by the world’s third-biggest oil consumer.
While Ambani’s announcement has been viewed by some as an acknowledgment that his group needs to look beyond oil to cement its future, fossil fuel still plays a central role at Reliance, accounting for almost 60% of its $73 billion in annual revenue. The oil-to-chemicals business is now a separate unit, and talks are underway to get Saudi Arabian Oil Co. as an investor.
“Mukesh Ambani is at the forefront of creating new businesses with new emerging technologies,” said Chakri Lokapriya, chief investment officer at TCG Asset Management Co. in Mumbai. “Creating businesses of scale at speed brings execution challenges, but he has demonstrated his capabilities.”
The story of Reliance dates back to the late 1960s when Dhirubhai Ambani, who started out as a gas-station attendant in Yemen, began building his polyester business into a vast empire. When he died of a stroke in 2002 without leaving a will, a succession feud erupted between his two sons, Mukesh and Anil, 62, which was eventually settled by the siblings’ mother, Kokilaben, in 2005.
Under the truce agreement, Mukesh got control of the flagship oil refining and petrochemicals businesses, while his younger brother got newer areas such as power generation, financial services and telecommunications services. Anil — once a billionaire — told a London court last year that his net worth was “zero.”
India’s billionaires are some of the largest gainers on the world’s rich list, as Asia’s best-performing major stock market this year gets a boost from a surge in initial public offerings.
Gautam Adani, founder of coal-power and renewable energy conglomerate Adani Group, has added $39.5 billion to his fortune this year, while the country’s third-richest person, technology tycoon Azim Premji, saw his wealth grow by $12.8 billion.
With Modi’s push to make India a $1 trillion vibrant digital economy, Ambani’s Reliance has captured mouth-watering investment deals from tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Qualcomm and Amazon. Reliance’s recent spectrum trading agreement with Bharti Airtel, which the company sees as a vehicle to advance its digital investments, winning underserved India with free and affordable telecom services, is seen as major boost that will further increase Ambani’s wealth.