Mukesh Ambani: Asia’s richest person

22:29Imagine that your third word come out is the name of an oil refinery. It opened in 1999. It cost$3.4 billion, but that was 30 % less than a similar refinery BP had built in Malaysia. Now, with the success of that oil refinery, Mukesh had the idea to diversify further, this time beyond polyester. Yeah. In 1999, during his usual half-hour bedtime chat with his father, Mukesh brought up the idea of getting into the telecoms business, specifically broadband and mobile. And this, as we know, looking back, market was about to explode. Right. A very canny decision. He seems to have a knack for just spotting these opportunities, just opening up, right, and just inserting himself at just the right time.

23:10Yeah. And having enough money to exploit those opportunities is really important. Right. Because all of us can sit around and say, oh, I think AI is going to be a big thing in the next few years. What shall I do about it? Yeah. Well, if you don't have the money to invest, then I'm afraid you're left out in the cold. Exactly. So Mukesh's father said the price of long-distance mobile calls were too expensive to make it work. But if you can make every Indian talk to every Indian at less than the cost of a postcard and still make money, you are in business. So in 2000, they announced a plan to roll out broadband to 115 cities in India, investing$3 billion over two years.

23:45And to raise those funds, they sold a slice, about 13 % of Reliance Petroleum to overseas investors. And that was thought to have basically raised about$750 million. And this was really the start of turning Reliance into a conglomerate. Because in 2001, they also got into biotech and insurance. Yeah. I think the two massive things that really propelled Mukesh to the super wealthy state as he is today are those moves into oil and to telecoms. That's the meat in this sandwich, I think. It's so interesting because you kind of think, you know, as you pointed out, some critics say, why can't you just focus on one thing you do and do it really, really well and make money from that?

24:21But it seems like to supercharge your wealth, you need to get into a lot of industries that might not seem connected to the immediate listener. It's actually not an unusual thing in some Asian countries. In places like South Korea, you have these big conglomerates which have crossholdings in lots of different industries. In India, there's a group called Tata, owns Jaguar Land Rover. It owns consulting services. It owns steelworks. It's not an unusual structure for an Asian, very rich family. But as we've talked about, a family business also opens you up to family tragedies. Because something happened in July 2002 that would rock the family.

24:55Mukesh's dad, Durubai Ambani, died at the age of 69 following a stroke. The funeral procession took more than an hour to travel the two kilometres to the crematorium. There were loads of crowds, as crowds thronged in their thousands. And he left behind a behemoth. At the time of his death, Reliance had an annual turnover of about$15 billion. These are some crazy stats here. It manufactured 3 % of India's GDP, was responsible for 5 % of the country's exports. If you were to translate that into the US, the US's economy is 20 trillion. So 1 % is 20 billion. The numbers are stratospheric. For one company to be that significant to a country the size of India is amazing.

25:41For one company and for one family. For one family. And this is really interesting. Durubai died without leaving a will, which meant that Mukesh's dad's personal property went to his wife, but the business wasn't as clear-cut. Uh-oh, I see trouble on the horizon here, don't you? In less than a month of their father's death, Mukesh becomes chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries. His brother Anil becomes vice chairman. The brothers jointly have inherited a fortune. In 2003, Forbes, the business magazine, jointly lists them as billionaires. Yeah, they have a combined net worth of$2.8 billion.

26:16That makes them the 123rd richest family in the world. So even sharing that with his brother, Mukesh is a billionaire in 2003.

26:36But as we've hinted, with more money comes more problems. Yeah, at the time of his succession, Mukesh said there was no ambiguity from his father's legacy and insisted that he was the final authority on all matters concerning reliance. I mean, talk about teeing up a conflict because Mukesh at the age of 47 and his brother, Anil, at the age of 45, are about to bitterly field for control of reliance. Cue the succession theme. Exactly. I can hear the little tinkle of the piano right now. Let's compare these two brothers. What are their qualities? What do we know about them? So Mukesh was described as conservative, cerebral, reticent and a workaholic.

27:11Remember, he doesn't drink smoke or gamble. Yeah. Anil, on the other hand, was described as flamboyant, braggadocio, loved being in the limelight, hanging out with Bollywood stars and politicians. Two very different characters. So as chairman, Mukesh set to work making changes to the company. First, he swapped himself in as the company's public speaker, a job that Anil had been doing for years. I bet he loved it. I'm sure that's not going to go down well. It was reported that Mukesh tried to oust Anil from the board of the company. Now, rumours were swirling, but their feud only really became public in 2004 when Mukesh admitted in a TV interview that there are issues which are ownership issues.

27:45These are in the private domain, but as far as Reliance are concerned, it is a very, very strong professional company. So doing his best to reassure people. To kind of say it's all fine, but by 2005, it had clearly got so bad behind the scenes that their mother had to intervene. She brokered a deal to split the conglomerate between the two brothers with the companies divided up in a de-merger. Quite a big move, that. So Mukesh took on the industrial businesses. So petrochemicals, oil and gas, refining textiles, and Anil got the newer ones, telecoms, electric power, entertainment and banking. Now, if you had dealt those cards out to me, I would have said that Anil has got the better cards there.

28:23Telecoms, entertainment, banking, those are, you know, I would say those are pretty good businesses to own. Petrochemicals, oil and gas, highly cash generative and all that kind of stuff. but not exactly businesses of the future? No, not exactly cutting edge. And I'm sure it didn't really go down well in terms of PR for Mukesh either. Yeah. But anyway, they've got their own little empires. And in 2006, Mukesh and Anil were listed separately on Forbes, which is the list we often look to to calibrate people's wealth. Mukesh is 56th richest in the world with 8.5 billion. Anil is 104th with 5.7 billion.

28:58But the field was only just getting started and Anil goes to war. So it all starts with his company challenging a gas contract signed by Mukesh's company during the split. Yeah, and then he accuses a government minister of being in league with his brother. Anil's company buys newspaper ads in 33 national newspapers, making these allegations, taking it very public. That's a lot of people looking at those claims. Anil also files a$2 billion defamation suit against Mukesh for remarks he made during an interview with The New York Times. Yes, because the New York Times had described Reliance's intelligence agency, a network of lobbyists, spies in New Delhi, who say they collect data about the vulnerabilities of the powerful, about the minutiae of bureaucrats' schedules, and about the activities of their competitors.

29:42So Mukesh had responded to the paper that all these activities were overseen by his brother before the split. Yeah, they said we demerged all of that, so things weren't good between them. Despite living in the same family block, they encountered each other at family events. it's reported they did not talk to each other during this period. And a friend of the family actually told the Telegraph newspaper in the UK, sometimes they are forced to shake hands, but they do not look at each other. Talk about an awkward handshake. Awkward handshake. But this feud was not just hurtful for the family. It could have been bad for the business because Mukesh had just become the richest person in India.

30:17He and Anil were fifth and sixth richest in the world. And fearing that their feud could have an impact on the market, Indian's finance minister declared it a matter of national interest for the brothers to resolve their dispute privately. It's a bit like getting Oasis back together. Yeah, it really is. Not just a matter of brotherly hurt and anger, but also a matter of national importance. So they end up in the Supreme Court in 2009 over the gas dispute and the court rules in Mukesh's favour. So that's one point for Mukesh. Yeah, once again, mum steps in. She broke as a peace accord, if you'll agree, in 2010.

30:51And Anil withdrew his defamation suit. Anil said, we've parted on a very cordial note and investors should have no fear whatsoever. It's a new beginning for me. And going forward, I'm sure Mukesh will do extremely well. It's funny how the mum always seems to step in to kind of sort this out. Didn't the same thing happen with the Oasis reunion? I think the mum had a role to play there. Anyway, so Anil saying, I'm sure Makesh will do extremely well, which he went on to do, unlike Anil. So it really was the beginning of the end for him, because by 2019, Anil had gone from being the sixth richest person on the planet with 42 billion to falling off the billionaire list completely.

31:28That's incredible. We don't have time to go into exactly why he had such a stratospheric collapse in wealth. But his company, Anil's company, was$80 million in debt. He'd become one of the fastest destroyers of shareholders of value in the last hundred years. Not exactly what you want. No, not something you want to be known for. And Anil was actually facing jail time if he didn't pay off this debt. So Mukesh actually stepped in and paid it off for him. Is he grateful or it sounds like a sort of real moment that, doesn't it? It could either be construed as an act of brotherly love or aggression.

32:00Or aggression, yeah. It's definitely passive aggressive. It's sort of like, I'll pay that bill for you. Thanks a lot, bro. In 2020, Anil declared personal bankruptcy in a UK court, although the judge said he clearly has more assets or income than he's letting on. Mukesh, on the other hand, has gone from strength to strength. So he's getting on in the sectors that Anil was actually failing in. Yeah, he launched something called Reliance Geo, a telecoms company in 2016. And that actually partly contributed to the downfall of Anna Lambani's existing telecom business. Right, because Mukesh's company slashed prices and invested in 4G technology, while Anna's company was struggling with old systems.

32:38And now Gio has more than 470 million subscribers. It's a very interesting tactic that you've got newer technology, so you've got an advantage there. You come in, you cut prices really aggressively to have a kind of land grab, get market share. Then once you've got the market share, you can start dialing up the price just a little bit. but you go in so obviously killed off the competition it's not unlike what companies like uber do right you kind of slash prices make it cheaper than ever to use the company and then when you have market dominance you just start dialing up the price and a lot of people would say that other people like advertising rates on google for example or amazon for example you see that same sort of thing you make something that people can't live without and then you start to sort of slowly ratchet the price up so this year in 2024 mukesh's reliance actually joined forces with Disney to create a streaming service in India with the idea to dominate Netflix and Prime Video.

33:27So again, they're trying to have that land grab over streaming. Yeah, he's now the richest person in Asia. He's got a staggering$115 billion. And he also has plans to enter e-commerce with the aim of challenging global giants like Amazon and Walmart. So Mukesh is clearly not one to rest on his laurels. Given the economic expansion of India and given their incredibly dominant role in many of these industries, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that in five years' time, Mukesh Ambani is going to be the richest person in the world. Oh, that's an interesting prediction. Let's come back in five years and see if you're right.

34:01Okay. There's so many new billionaires being formed all the time. We'll probably still be going with a bit of luck. Hopefully, fingers crossed. So one former employee said of Mukesh, he wants to be Netflix, he wants to be Alibaba, he wants to be everything. And that's the thing about billionaires. They just have an insatiable appetite for more. As we've often said, you got to 5, 10 million, I'm out of here. Yeah. But if you want to get to 5, 10 billion, well, you have to be more like Mukesh Ambani. Exactly. So we've got to judge him. We've got to go through our categories and score him out of 10 to find out whether he's good, bad, or just another billionaire.

34:38And we always start with just the numbers, the wealth. So in 2024, the Ambani family was valued as equivalent to 10 % of India's GDP, according to one Barclays report. Mukesh personally would be about 3 % of the GDP of India. That is nuts. So to be 3 % of GDP, that is 3 % of everything you spend, make, do in a country, all the economic activity in a whole country. 3%. Now, if this is the US, that's about 20 trillion in their GDP. So 1 % is 200 billion. So 3 % would be 600 billion. So to be that rich compared to your country, Someone in the US would have to have 600 billion, which is more than double what anyone's got at the moment.

35:21I mean, it's a lot of economic activity to be responsible for. No wonder the finance minister said it was of national importance for Mukesh to sort out his spat with his brother. I mean, we have rules in the UK that the government can't borrow more than 3 % of GDP to make the books balanced. That's the deficit for an entire year. Anyway, despite all that cash, he claimed in 2023, Mukesh said money didn't drive him. So he says that his dad said, if you start anything just to make money, you're a fool because you will never make any money or be a billionaire. If you start with purpose, and if your purpose is you want to be the best in the world, you want to do what nobody else has done, then money is a byproduct and that byproduct should never be important.

35:58I still follow his advice. Yeah. And in this category on wealth, it's not just how much they have, but how they spend it. And just going back to that$600 million wedding. Well, as you said, the$600 million was proportionally lower than what the average wealthy Indian family would spend on their wedding. He spent 0.5 % of his net worth on the wedding. Parents in India spend, on average, between 5 % and 15 % of their worth on their child's wedding. So by his standards, it was a cheap one. I mean, having said that, however, What a cheapskate. I still feel like building a personal skyscraper with an ice cream parlour, artificial snow, a staff of hundreds, that still ratchets him up in the billionaire's days.

36:37I can't think of more flamboyant spending than that in our whole series. Having the most expensive home in the world, which has got helicopter pads, six floors of parking, 600 snarf. I mean, he knows how to spend it, let's face it. I mean, he scores really highly for me. I think I would give him maybe even a nine out of ten. I was heading towards nine. I mean, I can't give him ten because he's not the richest person we've had on, but I'm going to give him a solid nine. And like I say, I predict he's going to be the richest in the world. So there'll be a lot more fancy skyscrapers being built for the M 'Barnese.

37:07Okay, so he scores a nine on wealth. Rags to riches. This is how far they've come. We've seen some people start literally from literally rags, like Oprah Winfrey, for example. But this doesn't qualify, I don't think. Well, it's a funny one because I think if you started the kind of family line from his father and the family were literally living in tenement housing, in slum housing, then, you know, maybe the journey would be further. But having said that, by the time Mukesh was going to school, he was clearly being sent to elite schools. So elite that his dad worried that he was going to be out of touch.

37:41So they got a tutor in to teach him real life education. Yeah. Yeah. So I think maybe. You're right. Because if we were just doing the family. Yes. it would be a 10. But he, by the time he's going to school, his father's already rich. He goes up with an empire which is growing alongside him. So I'm going to give him a three on this one. Even lower, two maybe. Yeah, I think I agree with you. I think, well, maybe even a one out of 10 for me because clearly he got - Or zero. No, I think maybe just a one out of 10. I still think we've yet to see a true zero out of 10 in Rags to Riches. Because he was given access to the family company, but he did work hard for it.

38:17Okay. I think you've convinced me to give it a one as well. That's a one from both of us. Villainy. This is what are you prepared to do to get ahead? So this is interesting, right? So a close friend spoke to the New York Times for that profile on Mukesh that got him into all that trouble with his brother. And he said, remember, these guys all grew up in the licensed Raj. They grew up as lotuses from the filth. Very interesting image. It makes them tough. It makes them suspicious. It makes them vindictive at times and makes them come out in a hurry. They always see life as, oh, God, better not miss an opportunity.

38:48When they were growing up, you didn't get a second chance. And also, you know, you don't have to read many books about India's past to realise that corruption has been an ever-present spectre in Indian business. And you feel going to go to the very, very top. A lot of people say it's unlikely you haven't had to scratch backs, pull strings. In May 2024, Indian Congress challenged the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to order a thorough investigation against Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, different family, also a billionaire, after he described them as hoarders of black money. Now, what that means is loads of cash which have been taken out of the system, which are stored and hoarded to hide them from tax authorities.

39:32In 2016, I happened to be in India, literally sitting at a bar one time, and they said, hold everything. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, is going to make an announcement live on television. So everyone gathered around, and he announced he was abolishing, banning all 501 ,000 rupee notes. They would all be cancelled. People could go in over the next couple of days to bring them in, to exchange them for new notes. It was a direct attack on what they thought was a sort of shadow economy of hoarded money. It was chaos for days. There must have been people with suitcases trying to bring them to the bank to change them.

40:05Well, that's the whole thing. There was accusations that people had warehouses full of cash and it was not making its way into the real economy and it wasn't very productive. I couldn't get to the airport the next day because I had no notes to pay the cab driver with. So it's also worth noting, however, that Modi attended the Mbani wedding just months after making this statement. Who didn't? Were you there? I mean, sadly, my invite got lost in the post. Mukesh has always said he's never paid a bribe or broken a rule. He told the New York Times that these are all fables, but he has conceded there are indirect ways of gaining favour.

40:34While Reliance never pays the tuitions of bureaucrats' children, he acknowledged that foundations controlled by or affiliated with Reliance sometimes have, in his words, given some scholarship maybe. But that's all out in the public domain. And in 2014, it was revealed that Reliance paid politicians$100 ,000 a year for, quote, consultancy retainers. And in 2024, both Modi and his election rival, Rahu Gandhi, accused the other of accepting, quote, truckloads of cash from Mbani. Yeah. So, OK, you can make your own judgments on that. All I would say is that in the UK Parliament, there are plenty of politicians and MPs who also get paid a retainer for consultancy services.

41:12So that's not unique to India. And we also have to note that when it comes to inequality, when the lavish wedding spending came out in the press, it was criticised really widely as a symbol of the widening gap between the rich and the poor in India. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point because there is real poverty, desperate poverty in India. I think actually India's income inequality is now worse than it was under British rule. Wow. The very existence of billionaires we've discussed in the past is sort of a symbol of crushing inequality and people find it obscene. So when it comes to villainy, how would you rate him?

41:46Gosh.

41:50I'm going to go straight down the middle and do a five. Well, I kind of feel like, and I think you can sense this in his story in a rivalry with his brother. He is a really tough operator. And I think, you know, that willingness to get into telecoms in a way to crush his own brother, even though you know that the company's been divided specifically to give the brother the telecom side of it. That to me kind of indicates there's a certain slipperiness because these were two brothers who were ostensibly growing up to inherit the family business together. So I would give him slightly higher. I would give him a six out of 10.

42:25Okay, fine. Six from you, five from me. Philanthropy, they've got a lot of money. How much do they give away? So in 2023, it was reported that Mukesh Ambani and family donated around$50 million through the Reliance Foundation, which focuses on education and healthcare. Sounds like a lot, but when you put it into perspective, it actually isn't. That is peanuts compared to his wealth. He's given away 0.06 % of his worth. That was in 2023. He's no Bill Gates. He's no Chuck Feeney. Yeah, exactly. So he's only really ranked third out of Indian philanthropists, despite him being the richest man, not just in India, but in Asia.

43:03It's a two for me. I mean, I would go as far as to say even just a one, really. Okay, one, yeah. Could do better, Mukesh. Could do a lot better. And then power. This is a company which generates 3 % of Indian GDP. That is nuts. So he's got to be powerful. So a 2024 CNN report of India's growth as a superpower placed him as one of the three men alongside Modi and fellow billionaire Adani as, quote, playing a fundamental role in shaping the economic superpower India will become in the coming decades. Yeah, so he can pick up the phone anytime he likes and talk to Narendra Modi or probably any other head of state in the world, I would say.

43:41So I'm going to give him for power. He's also helping shape what modern India looks like. So I'm going to give him a nine. Oh, interesting. I feel like I would give him an 8 out of 10 just because, you know, he's really well known in business circles. He's incredibly famous in India. But I would say that a lot of people up until the Ambani wedding stories started coming out and flooding people's news feeds. A lot of people didn't know who he was. Yeah, I guess that's true. But I still think he's a mover and a shaker. And whether people in the street know him in the UK or the US or whatever, I'm willing to bet that if you stop someone on the street in the United States, they wouldn't know who he is.

44:17Doesn't mean he hasn't got enormous power. So nine from you, eight from me. Got it. What about his legacy? I think it's kind of too early to tell. It's kind of one of those ones where I think he's going to be the richest person in the world in a few years time. So I would say he's going to cast a huge influence over India. And he's like a poster child of Indian economic emergence. And not just in one industry, in multiple industries, right? So they're changing the face of things like telecoms, textiles, petrochemicals in one country and also the world. Yeah, I'd say legacy, a work in progress, but I'd give it an eight right now.

44:55A solid eight. Yeah. But room to grow. Room to grow. Always room to grow. Always room to grow. So then we have this awful decision we have to make all the time. Is it good, bad, or just another billionaire? And I always get nervous because these people are so powerful. I think they're listening. I'll be on some blacklist for the rest of my life. And you also may not get to interview them. Exactly. I'm ruining my own journalistic chances of getting in the door. And also the chances of getting invited to a wedding, an Embarney wedding. Oh, gosh, yeah, exactly. Well, I'm going to ask you to go first.

45:21Well, I mean, as you've pointed out, it's still very much a developing story. And he clearly has the kind of guts and motivation to go even further. He hasn't done anything quite as dastardly as other billionaires we've judged. Like, for instance, he's not a drug trafficker, for instance. Or an arms dealer. Exactly. So I would say for now, my judgment is just another billionaire. Phew, I agree 100 % because I think we don't know enough to call it the other way or either other way. So I will say he's just another billionaire. But when I say that, like I say, keep an eye on this guy because I think he's going to be the richest person in the world.

45:58It'll be between him and Elon Musk and that all depends on what happens in the space race and what have you. But he's got a very good chance. So do you think there will be Ambani rockets in the future? Could be. I mean, when you get to a certain amount of wealth, how are you going to soak up that kind of money? Just firing rockets into space is one of the most expensive things you can do. So keep an eye on the skies for Mukesh Ambani. Mukesh Ambani, you are just another billionaire, but gosh, you've got a lot of money. So who's next up? So we have the man who came to symbolise Russian excess and money in the UK.

46:29A man who became the poster child for oligarchs in London, particularly in the 90s and noughties. It is one time Chelsea owner, Roman Abramovich. Good Bad Billionaire was produced by Hannah Hufford and Louise Morris. with additional production support from Tamsin Curry. James Cook is the editor and it's a BBC Studios production for BBC World Service. For the BBC World Service, the senior podcast producer is Kat Collins and the podcast commissioning editor is John Manel.

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