India’s trillionaire brothers
India now has two trillionaires (in rupee terms) - Mukesh Ambani and his younger brother Anil Ambani. They are the Sons of Dhirubhai ambani who founded the Reliance group. Dhirubhai Ambani started his career as a dispatch clerk in Besse and Co and rose up the ranks. Later he started his own company which exported spices and imported polyester yarn. In 1966 he started a textile mill in Naroda and used polyester fiber yarn with the brand name Vimal. I still remember the “Only Vimal” advertisements the used to shown in TV every now and then. Dhirubhai ventured into petrochemicals, telecommunications, information technology, energy, power, retail, textiles, infrastructure services, capital markets, and logistics.
Like every business house Dhirubhai ambani has got the support of the government where policies where made in their favor. He was also said to be a king maker in the government. Dhirubhai’s biggest competitor during that time was Nusli Wadia of Bombay dyeing. Nusli Wadia is a Christian Parsi who happens to be the grandson of Pakistan’s founder Muhammad ali jinnah. When Nusli Wadia also got a license to build a Dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) plant the fight between him and Ambani turned ugly.
Ramnath Goenka the newspaper baron of India who founded the Indian express fought a long battle with Dhirubhai Ambani. In his paper the Indian express he published a series of articles against reliance industries citing unfair and unethical practices. It stopped only after Dhirubhai Ambani suffered stroke in February 1986. Both his sons Mukesh and Anil Ambani started managing Reliance from then on. Goenka now pointed his gun against the government and accused it of not doing enough. Goenka’s journalist’s Gurumurthy and Mulgoakar ghost wrote a letter to the president and published it in the newspaper as a scoop. The president at that time zail singh had made some changes to the letter before sending it to Rajiv Gandhi the then prime minister. The fight shifted to the government and Goenka. The Government raided the Indian express guest house and recovered the original draft and charged many cases against Indian express.
Dhirubhai Ambani suffered a major brain stroke on june 24th 2002and fell into a coma. He died on july 6th 2002. Many admire and appreciate Dhirubhai’s rags to riches story. His wife is Kokilaben Ambani. He has tow sons Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani, and two daughters, Nina Kothari and Deepti Salgaonkar. Two years after his death a feud erupted between the two brothers on the ownership of the companies. Kokilaben the matriarch of the family, KK Kamath a close friend of the Ambani’s , the managing director of the icici bank and the two sisters intervened and a settlement was reached.
The reliance was split between Mukesh and Anil with Mukesh getting reliance industries and ipcl, while Anil Ambani got Reliance Infocomm, Reliance Energy and Reliance Capital. Mukesh Ambani’s Group is called as the Reliance Industries Limited while Anil’s entity has been named Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG). Mukesh Ambani’s personal stake in reliance is 48 %.
Anil Ambani has personal wealth is estimated to be around Rs 1, 00,000 crore in terms share prices. Mukesh Ambani’s is above of Rs 1, 15,000 crore, which is his share holding in various group companies.
According to Forbes list of world’s billionaires in 2007 Mukesh Ambani is ranked 14th and Anil Ambani is ranked 18th.
