Mukesh Ambani

Sizing up Mukesh Ambani:

The Story of Unparalleled Ambition!

Piyush Sharma
Piyush Sharma – Executive-in-Residence at UCLA and ISB –

is a global CEO coach and a C-Suite + Start-up advisor. He is
an awarded top-rated global business leader, celebrated
speaker, top influencer, and sought-after thought leader, besides
being a TEDx speaker. He represents the interests of United
Nations affiliates as an Advisory Board Member and as India
Advisor for UNSDGs. He is a member of the board at IIT Delhi
for Technology Business Incubation Unit besides being a Star
Mentor of Change at Niti Aayog. His in-depth work as a
certified mediation and Yoga teacher and as a master story-
teller facilitate transformational leadership and capability
building. Follow Piyush on twitter and linkedin and his
writings in Forbes and Fortune.
Homegrown ‘big tech’ is arriving in India. The difference.

It is all rolled into one. The story of the 21st-century wealth
is the story of Reliance. And steering it all is a humble
person of an unassuming disposition – the Mukesh Ambani.
The history of the world is a history of curious proportions.

Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Pablo Picasso, Mahatma
Gandhi, Churchill, Mussolini – some of the most powerful
icons in history have been men of short height. And supreme
ambitions.
The world has slowly seen the rise of India in bagging top
beauty pageants in the 90s and supreme dominance in world
cricket on the one hand to India’s rise to the top of fastest-
growing economies and the rise of the Indian CEOs running the
show at some of the most iconic companies worldwide. What
has, however, not made headline yet is the rise of the Indian
billionaire atop the league as a Jeff Bezos or a Bill Gates.
Slowly, a big encore has been in the works in India which even
most of the Indian media has probably not warmed up to, what
to talk of the international media.
The story of the 21st-century wealth is the story of Reliance.

And steering it all is a humble person of an unassuming
disposition – the Mukesh Ambani.
Humble beginnings
Under Mukesh Ambani, a part-inherited, part-built
petrochemicals business has been successfully rechristened
after having been split up with brother Anil, into a three-sided
power apparatus - Retail, Telecom and Refinery.
The refinery business has been the historical mainstay where

the overarching patriarch dream has received a worthy anchor
in the son Mukesh Ambani who has now been in talks with
Saudi Arabian Oil Co to sell an estimated $15 billion-dollar
stake.
Mukesh has been quick to think of the future even as it is

coming sooner than ever. He realizes the power of ‘ecosystem
thinking’ and has created a platform integrating and aiming to
create a technology-driven, e-commerce force carving out a
business opportunity canvass of the likes of the best of the
American icons of Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon and
the Chinese giants Baidu, Huawei, Alibaba and Tencent. Yes,
Huawei – with Jio’s 5G push and the US and other nations’
growing reservations with Huawei.
The picture is slowly unfolding and the contours are now

becoming visible.
The debt resolution game!

With a very late entry into telecom through the launch of Jio a
little over three years ago, Reliance has created history by
shaking up the industry to get two mega rivals Vodafone and
Idea to merge, something unheard of across industries and
across global markets. Additionally, leaving the other major
player Airtel gasping for breath with Bharti Airtel posting a
loss of Rs 5200-plus crores in the recent fiscal-fourth quarter,
its fourth successive quarterly loss.
Massive deals of paring debt, position Reliance successfully at

par with the world majors Alibaba and Tencent who have built
debt-free large-scale operations and sit with large aggregated
and engaged consumers. Over no more than the last one month,
Jio has raised $10-plus billion across five deals from Marquee
investors – Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners,
General Atlantic, and KKR. This is when Google is rumoured
to have missed the bus in favour of Facebook. Others in the
waiting include The Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, Microsoft,
Abu Dhabi’s state fund Mubadala and more.
These deals serve as the perfect springboard to acting as a debt-

resolution warhorse for Reliance which could do with a balance
sheet clean-up after a seven-year, $100 billion debt-driven
expansion.
Latest news reports suggest that an overseas listing of Jio

Platforms could be on the cards in the next two years. This is in
line with Mr Ambani’s stated aim last year August to list
Reliance’s consumer businesses, Retail and Jio in the next 5
years. A US-China tech cold war era that the world may be
heralded into, would only help the cause of Reliance. And so
would a true-blue technology business (unlike a moniker of
being a tech company being touted like many others) and not a
commodity business. The upside for Reliance: access to
overseas capital, better visibility and direct foreign investment.
Jio Platforms
Jio Platforms that houses all the digital assets - apps,
ecosystems, and most importantly, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd,
the biggest telecom network in the country of India’s most
valuable company - has been valued at USD 65-plus billion in
less than six months of existence. Jio Platforms compares with
large global digital ecosystem platforms that are largely debt-
free like Alphabet, Tencent and Alibaba.
The Jio-Facebook alliance, arguably hailed as a masterstroke,

has the power to completely remodel the Indian retail landscape
with an ecosystem created around JioMart enabling customers
to access local Kirana (mom-and-pop) stores through
WhatsApp unleashing the power of both offline and online
retail. Jiomart as a digital commerce platform has the capacity
to hit Amazon and Flipkart where it hurts the most and
completely pull the rug from under their feet what with
empowering nearly 30 million small Kirana store owners to
start unleashing havoc.
China, Korea and Japan have successful similar models like

WeChat in China that deliver consumer stickiness. Jio’s own
400 million-odd consumer base combined with independent
400 million across-all-telecom-majors consumer base of
WhatsApp is bound to create a mighty juggernaut. For sure,
concerns related to data privacy, market dominance, net
neutrality, regulatory structure all loom large for good reasons.
The Jio-Facebook alliance can also herald the arrival of one

super app like WeChat combining payments (WhatsApp Pay
and Jio App), messaging, communication, and commerce. As
also be a potential threat for Google, Walmart, Amazon and
Paytm.
The Global Playbook

Around the world, there is a unique phenomenon playing out.
Google that started out as a search engine and became the most
powerful media company with the highest share of ad revenues
is aiming to become a commerce player. Amazon which has
been an e-commerce major wants to be an ad giant. Facebook,
the world’s biggest social media company has been harboring
commerce ambitions what with the most recent launch of
‘Facebook Shops’. Almost all of big-tech is scrambling to
create ecosystem businesses around the core five areas in one
way or the other: message, commerce, content, cloud, and
payments.
Reliance in India which had no presence as of 2010 in any of

these is today successfully creating a most powerful position in
almost all of these. Reliance is training its guns further on a
range of businesses – online retail, content streaming, digital
payments, education, healthcare, enterprise telecom and more.
Homegrown Big-Tech is arriving in India. The difference. It is

all rolled into one.
The upside in investing in a beast that towers high across one of

the largest e-commerce, internet and telecom markets
worldwide is what gets the most powerful tech companies,
private equity (PE) funds and sovereign investors to make a
beeline in one of the most panic-stuck times. Courtesy the
power that has been bestowed upon Reliance by Jio Platforms.
Conclusion
Mukesh Ambani, as the elder son of the patriarch - the late
Dhirubhai Ambani - has come a long way. From legacy oil-
and-petrochemicals empire to a big-tech behemoth, the path to
greatness has been a story of grit, guts and glory evoking awe
and grandeur - of greatness, of power and possibilities, and of
risks and returns.
Most of all wild, rampant, and preposterous ambition.
Through all of these, the criterion for failure has perhaps been
fierce success.
Already the richest man in Asia, is there something that this

man cannot do? He might become one of the five richest in the
world in the next three years, as per Hurun Research. And a
trillionaire in 2033, aged 75, according to a most recent May
2020 study by Comparisun.
A potential Wall Street listing and a probable $100 billion
valuation in a year is perhaps the baby step in this new journey.
So colossal is the size of ambition that the day when it may be
an Indian summer for the tag of the world’s richest man sitting
atop the world’s most valuable company seems not far off.
2020

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Sizing up Mukesh Ambani:

The Story of Unparalleled Ambition!

Piyush Sharma – Executive-in-Residence at UCLA and ISB –

Homegrown ‘big tech’ is arriving in India. The difference.

The history of the world is a history of curious proportions.

The story of the 21st-century wealth is the story of Reliance.

The refinery business has been the historical mainstay where

Mukesh has been quick to think of the future even as it is

The picture is slowly unfolding and the contours are now

The debt resolution game!

Massive deals of paring debt, position Reliance successfully at

These deals serve as the perfect springboard to acting as a debt-

Latest news reports suggest that an overseas listing of Jio

The Jio-Facebook alliance, arguably hailed as a masterstroke,

China, Korea and Japan have successful similar models like

The Jio-Facebook alliance can also herald the arrival of one

The Global Playbook

Reliance in India which had no presence as of 2010 in any of

Homegrown Big-Tech is arriving in India. The difference. It is

The upside in investing in a beast that towers high across one of

Most of all wild, rampant, and preposterous ambition.

Already the richest man in Asia, is there something that this

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