Mukesh Ambani on Conglomerate Building

Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani (born April 19, 1957 in Aden, then a British crown colony) is the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries and, as of mid-2026, the wealthiest person in Asia with a fortune near $92 billion. He took over Reliance after his father Dhirubhai's death in 2002 and expanded far beyond the founding textiles and petrochemicals into telecom, retail, media and energy.

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.

Having broken the ARPU model, Ambani pivoted Jio toward a web-scale stack: JioTV, JioCinema, JioSaavn for music, JioMart e-commerce with sister company Reliance Retail, and quiet SaaS acquisitions. The portfolio — connectivity, content and commerce in one corporate parent — was, in IDC analyst Ravi Sharma's framing, unique among global telcos and pointed toward Jio becoming a consumer-tech company rather than a carrier.

Jio entered the market with plans starting at just over $2 per month and an initial free period covering data, voice, video and bundled applications. Critics accused the firm of predatory pricing, arguing that Reliance was using cash flows from its oil and retail businesses to subsidize below-cost telecom services — a strategy Greyhound Research warned could leave one business house controlling content, broadband, telephony and device ecosystems.