Mukesh Ambani on Brand Building

Beyond telecom, Ambani steered Reliance into retail (Reliance Retail, India's largest chain), media through Network18, and sports ownership of Mumbai Indians plus founding the Indian Super League football competition. He also joined Bank of America's board as its first non-American director and was elected a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2016 for his work on refineries and petrochemicals.

Jio's marketing drew political heat when full-page advertisements featured Prime Minister Narendra Modi's photograph, prompting a rebuke from the consumer affairs ministry and a public apology from the company for what it called an inadvertent mistake. The incident fed an existing narrative about proximity between Reliance and the Modi government, and gave competitors ammunition on regulatory-equity grounds.

Customer uptake was instant: queues formed at Reliance stores for the free Jio SIM cards, although users still needed 4G-enabled handsets. Delhi consumers interviewed by the BBC framed cheap mobile data as the draw — for messaging, social media and video — but several said they would wait to compare network quality before fully switching operators, indicating that price alone might not lock in retention.