If anyone personifies how quickly the emerging economies of Asia are catching up with the West, it is Anil Ambani.
His company, Reliance Energy, is now worth $18.1bn, making it the biggest private company in India, second only to state-owned oil enterprise ONGC.
Ambani is responsible for many of the initiatives that have brought Indian finance into the 21st century. He was the first to offer international public offerings of global receipts, convertibles and bonds, and directed Reliance’s attempts to raise billions from the international financial markets. As a result, over 3.1 million people are investors in the group.
Together with his brother Mukesh, he has built Reliance – which was founded by his late father Dhirubhai H Ambani – into a business with high-profile interests in textiles, petroleum, petrochemicals, power and, mostly notably, in telecoms. Reliance Infocomm recruited more than six million people in 2004, its first year of trading, beating fellow billionaire Sunil Mittal.
The group exports to more than 100 countries, and its revenue represents around 5% of India’s GDP.
Ambani graduated from the University of Bombay (now Mumbai) and studied for his MBA at the Wharton School, part of the University of Pennsylvania in the USA. He has a vast amount of official positions within India, including membership of various government and education committees.
In 2004 he was elected as independent member of the Indian upper house of parliament, where he has stood on a platform of modernisation of the world’s largest democracy and its extensive bureaucracy. In the same year he took part in Mumbai’s first ever marathon.
The awards in Ambani’s name are almost as extensive as his business achievements. He had been voted India’s most admired chief executive for six years in succession, and has been twice ranked number one in India Today’s Power List.
But most surprisingly of all – and this perhaps demonstrates how fashionable business is in a rapidly developing country such as India – he was voted MTV Youth Icon of the Year in September 2003. It’s certainly hard to imagine Alan Sugar or even Richard Branson winning the equivalent British award.
