Anil Dhirubhai Ambani is an Indian businessman. He is the chairman of Reliance Group, which was created in July 2006 following a demerger from Reliance Industries Limited. He leads a number of stock listed corporations including Reliance Capital, Reliance Infrastructure, Reliance Power and Reliance Communications. Ambani, once the sixth richest person in the world, declared before a UK court in February 2020 that his net worth is zero and he is bankrupt. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha, upper house of the Parliament of India from Uttar Pradesh as an Independent. His major business interests in entertainment include 44 FM radio stations, nationwide DTH business, animation studios, and several multiplex cinemas throughout India. After his father's death in 2002, Anil Ambani took over the reins of Reliance Group with interests in telecom, entertainment, financial services, power and infrastructure. Ambani is also credited with India's largest IPO, that of Reliance Power, which in 2008 was subscribed in less than 60 seconds, the fastest in the history of Indian capital markets to date. In 2005 Ambani made his debut in the entertainment industry with an acquisition of a majority stake in Adlabs Films, a company with interests in film processing, production, exhibition and digital cinema. The company was renamed Reliance MediaWorks in 2009. In 2008 a joint venture worth US$1.2 billion with Steven Spielberg's production companyDreamWorks cast Ambani's entertainment business on to a global platform. He has contributed to the production of a number of Spielberg films, including the Academy Award-winning Lincoln.
Ambani is a Gujarati. He is married to Indian actress Tina Munim, and they have two sons, Jai Anmol Ambani and Jai Anshul Ambani. Ambani is the younger brother of Mukesh Ambani and has two sisters, Nina Bhadrashyam Kothari and Dipti Dattaraj Salgaocar. In early 2019, a court in Mumbai held Ambani in criminal contempt for non-payment of personally guaranteed debt Reliance Communications owed to Swedish gearmaker Ericsson. Instead of jail time, the court gave him a month to come up with the funds. At the end of the month, Ambani was bailed out by his older brother, Mukesh Ambani.
Awards and recognition
Conferred the 'Businessman of the Year 1997' award by India's leading business magazine Business India, December 1998.
Voted 'the Businessman of the Year' in a poll conducted by The Times of India – TNS, December 2006.
Voted the 'Best role model' among business leaders in the biannual Mood of the Nation poll conducted by India Today magazine, August 2006.
Conferred 'The Entrepreneur of the Decade Award' by the Bombay Management Association, October 2002.
Awarded the First Wharton Indian Alumni Award by the Wharton India Economic Forum in recognition of his contribution to the establishment of Reliance as a global leader in many of its business areas, December 2001.
Selected by Asiaweek magazine for its list of 'Leaders of the Millennium in Business and Finance' and was introduced as the only 'new hero' in Business and Finance from India, June 1999.
Controversies
In 2018, India's principal opposition party, Indian National Congress, accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of favouring Anil Ambani's defence manufacturing company over HAL, a public sector enterprise, in a fighter aircraft deal worth INR 58,000 crores with French manufacturing firm Dassault. Ambani, several of whose companies are debt-ridden, has denied all charges of benefiting from crony capitalism. In factual terms, Reliance Defence stood to get just over 3 per cent of the Rs 30,000-crore Dassault Aviation offsets contract, contrary to the impression that it was to be the biggest beneficiary of the Rafale fighter jet deal. In a possibly related controversy, one of his businesses partly financed a French film in which former French president Francois Hollande's then-partner had acted around the same time the aircraft deal was being negotiated. He gained notoriety as one of the fastest destroyers of shareholder wealth in the last 100 years with the combined group market cap declining by 90% since the formation of the Reliance ADA group. In February 2020, Anil Ambani was locked in a legal battle with 3 Chinese banks. He was asked to set aside $100mn by the court which led him to make the statement that his net worth is currently zero after taking into account his liabilities.The dispute still rages on with the UK court ordering him to pay the 3 Chinese banks to the tune of $716mn.
