Mukesh D. Ambani has completed 20 years at the helm of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) — two decades of dizzying change that saw the making of a global conglomerate, reaching a large swath of industries from oil refining and petrochemicals to telecom, retail, green energy and now financial services.
Ambani’s tenure at the top was marked by Reliance reporting a 17-fold jump in revenues and a 20-times surge in profit, while the company’s market cap grew at an annual rate of 20 per cent.
Mukesh Ambani took over the reins of RIL after the sudden demise of his industrialist father Dhirubhai Ambani.
After Dhirubhai’s death in 2002, Mukesh and his younger brother Anil assumed joint leadership of RIL. While the elder brother took over as the chairman and managing director, Anil was named vice-chairman and joint managing director.
Differences between the brothers led to a split in the Reliance empire with Mukesh assuming control of the gas, oil & petrochemicals businesses, while the younger scion got telecommunications, power generation and financial services units through the process of a demerger.
Subsequently, Ambani re-entered the telecom business and diversified into retail where he went on to become the country’s largest player. He also forayed into new energy and raised a record Rs 2.5 lakh crore selling minority interests particularly in its digital services business during the Covid lockdown.
RIL sources said that during his tenure, the market capitalisation grew at an annualised rate of 20.6 per cent from Rs 41,989 crore in March 2002 to Rs 17.8 lakh crore in March 2022.
The revenues of Reliance showed an annualised increase of 15.4 per cent from Rs 45,411 crore in 2001-02 to Rs 7.9 lakh crore in 2021-22.
Net profit grew at an annualized rate of 16.3 per cent from Rs 3,280 crore in 2001-02 to Rs 67,845 crore in 2021-22.
According to Motilal Oswal’s 26th annual wealth creation study, the company has emerged as the largest wealth creator over 2016-21, generating wealth to the tune of nearly Rs 10 lakh crore and breaking its own previous record.
During Mukesh’s tenure, RIL has also announced a string of acquisitions. These included Network18, Hathway Cable, DEN Networks and Saavn. Recently it announced the purchase of Metro AG’s India operations for a consideration of Rs 2,850 crore.
