Mukesh Ambani

Mukesh Ambani was born on April 19, 1957; his father, Dhirubhai Ambani, was the founder of Reliance. After finishing school, Dhirubhai Ambani went to work in Aden and worked at Shell from 1954 to 1957; Mukesh Ambani has recalled that he was born in Aden and that his father returned to India the year he was born.⁠[1][2][3][3][3]

Mukesh Ambani first enrolled at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), then switched a few weeks later to the University Department of Chemical Technology (UDCT, now the Institute of Chemical Technology) of the University of Mumbai, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. He has recalled that while studying chemical engineering he worked almost full time for Reliance, going straight to the office after classes ended at 2:30 p.m. each day. In 1977, he joined the board of Reliance.⁠[4][1][4][1]

He then enrolled in the MBA program at Stanford University in the United States, and has recalled that William Sharpe, a professor of financial economics, had a great impact on him. While he was at Stanford, Reliance obtained a license to make polyester; he had planned to finish his studies first and then join the World Bank’s Young Professionals Program, but after learning that his father would not wait for him and was starting construction of the polyester plant immediately, he returned to India in 1981. After formally joining Reliance, his first boss was Rasikbhai Meswani, who was in charge of the polyester business, and he took part in setting up the polyester filament yarn project.⁠[1][4][4][4][4][4][4]

In the late 1990s, Mukesh Ambani led the construction of a grassroots refinery at Jamnagar, Gujarat, with a refining capacity of 660,000 barrels per day (33 million tonnes a year), integrated with petrochemicals, power generation, port, and other facilities; the refining complex was commissioned in 2000. He later led the construction of another 580,000-barrels-per-day refinery next to it, bringing refining capacity at the single Jamnagar location to 1.4 million barrels per day.⁠[5][6][5][5]

On July 6, 2002, Dhirubhai Ambani died, and Mukesh Ambani succeeded him as chairman of Reliance Industries, also serving as managing director. In 2004, under his leadership, Reliance Industries entered the Fortune Global 500 list.⁠[2][7][6]

On November 18, 2004, Mukesh Ambani acknowledged in a television interview that there were “ownership issues” between him and his younger brother Anil Ambani, but said they were in the private domain. On June 17–18, 2005, the brothers reached a settlement and decided to separate their businesses: the newer businesses went to Anil Ambani, while Mukesh Ambani retained the older ones. On August 3 of that year, he presented the demerger scheme to shareholders at the Reliance Industries annual general meeting; after the scheme was approved by shareholders and the Bombay High Court, the four demerged companies were handed over to Anil Ambani’s management from January 2006.⁠[8][8][8][8][8]

In 2006, Reliance entered the retail business with Reliance Retail; Mukesh Ambani led the development of a nationwide retail network spanning multiple formats and supply chains, and Reliance Retail later became the largest organized retailer in India.⁠[6][1][5][5]

Starting in fiscal year 2008–09, Mukesh Ambani capped his annual remuneration from Reliance Industries at ₹15 crore, continuing through fiscal year 2019–20; from fiscal year 2020–21, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he gave up his salary until all of the company’s businesses returned to their earnings potential.⁠[7]

In 2016, at the Reliance shareholder meeting, Mukesh Ambani announced that the telecom business Jio would open from September 5: data, voice, video, and all applications would be free for all users until December 31, 2016, and voice calls would be free forever after that. He set a target for the Jio team to acquire 100 million customers in the shortest possible time and set a world record, and said that insufficient interconnect capacity provided by incumbent operators had caused Jio users to suffer over five crore call failures to other networks. He also founded Reliance Jio Infocomm, the operating company of Jio.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][1]

In 2020, Jio Platforms, Reliance’s digital business holding company, raised ₹1.52 trillion from 13 investors including Meta (then named Facebook) and Google. Mukesh Ambani has been a director of Jio Platforms since July 7, 2020, and later became its chairman. In the same year, he announced that Reliance would aim to reach net-zero carbon by 2035.⁠[1][1][1][6]

Reliance Industries had issued debentures with convertible warrants in 1994 and allotted equity shares against the warrants in 2000. On July 16, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) filed a complaint over this before the Special Court in Mumbai, naming among others Mukesh Ambani in his capacity as a director of RIL. On September 30 of that year, the Special Court dismissed the complaint as barred by limitation; SEBI filed a revision application before the Bombay High Court, which was still pending as of June 2026.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

In 2021, Reliance announced a $10 billion New Energy business and began building the Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex, named after his father, on 5,000 acres in Jamnagar.⁠[6][6]

In 2023, Mukesh Ambani’s three children, Isha Ambani, Akash Ambani, and Anant Ambani, joined the board of Reliance Industries; Akash Ambani heads Jio, Isha Ambani oversees retail and financial services, and Anant Ambani is responsible for the energy business. On July 21 of that year, the board decided to re-appoint Mukesh Ambani as managing director for a five-year term from April 19, 2024; because he will turn 70 on April 19, 2027, the re-appointment required approval by shareholders through a special resolution.⁠[6][9][7][7][7]

On June 10, 2026, Reliance Industries announced it would build a data center with 168 MW capacity in Jamnagar together with Meta. Mukesh Ambani said the partnership was a transformative moment for India’s digital infrastructure and showed that India was ready to be at the forefront of the global AI revolution.⁠[10][10][10]

When quarterly results were released on July 17, he said that Jio Platforms had filed its draft red herring prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India during the quarter, and that the upcoming initial public offering would give investors an opportunity to participate in India’s digital growth.⁠[11][11]

On the evening of October 7, 2026, Elon Musk posted on X that Starlink was being blocked in India by “certain oligarchs” in order to maintain their monopolistic control over the Indian people, without naming anyone; Bloomberg considered the post an apparent swipe at Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Bharti MittalSunil MittalSunil Mittal is an Indian entrepreneur and the founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises. He started in 1976 by manufacturing bicycle components in Ludhiana, entered mobile communications under the Airtel brand in the 1990s, and built Bharti Airtel into a major telecom operator in India and Africa; he also led Bharti’s acquisition of the satellite company OneWeb and is co-chair of Eutelsat.Open the full entry of the Bharti group. India’s communications ministry responded on October 8 that its satellite communications authorization framework was fair and non-discriminatory; on the same day, Musk posted again asking, “Is Ambani the real boss of India?” Musk had previously been at odds with Mittal and Ambani over how India should allocate satellite spectrum, and in 2025 all three sides signed separate deals to distribute Starlink devices in India. Asked by Business Today about Musk’s allegation, Jio Platforms managing director Akash Ambani said the company wanted to keep its head down and deliver value to Indian consumers.⁠[1][12][13][14][13][13][15][15][12]

Mukesh Ambani drove Reliance’s backward integration along the value chain: from textiles to polyester fibers, then to petrochemicals and refining, and finally into oil and gas exploration and production; along the way, Reliance’s petrochemicals capacity grew from less than one million tonnes to about 21 million tonnes per year. He is now leading the company’s shift to a fully integrated renewable energy value chain.⁠[5][5][1]

Mukesh Ambani is a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum and an international member of the United States National Academy of Engineering, and serves on the Global Advisory Council of Bank of America, the International Advisory Council of the Brookings Institution, the McKinsey & Company International Advisory Council, the Stanford Business School’s Advisory Council, and the London School of Economics’ India Advisory Group. He is chair of the British Asian Trust’s India Advisory Council and chairman of the Board of Governors of Pandit Deendayal Energy University.⁠[1][1][1][5]

Reliance Industries: Official website: https://www.ril.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6]

Jio Platforms: Official website: https://www.jio.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]