Ambani Family

Few men in history have made as dramatic a contribution to their country's economic fortunes as did the founder of Reliance, Sh. Dhirubhai H Ambani. Fewer still have left behind a legacy that is more enduring and timeless. Dhirubhai is widely regarded as the father of India's capital markets. Reliance touches the life of Indians every single day such as Little Krishna on Nick, Reliance Mobile, Reliance Fresh, Big TV, Mumbai Indians etc .

This section talks about the Ambani family and their contribution. An attempt has been made to gather information about them from interviews, blogs etc. You'll find Information about :
Reliance and ADAG Companies , DhiruBhai Ambani,, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani, their children Mukesh Ambani, Nita Mukesh Ambani, Antila (house of Nita and Mukesh), Anil Ambani, Tina Anil Ambani, Feud between Ambani brothers

Website www.relianceinsider.com as the name suggests gives insider information on reliance

Reliance Industries

Reliance Industries, is an Indian conglomerate of companies started by DhiruBhai Ambani(28 December 1932, - 6 July 2002) in 1966. Dhirubhai Ambani founded Reliance as a textile company and led its evolution as a global leader in various sectors like petrochemicals, textiles and is involved in the production of crude oil and gas, to polyester and polymer products. The companies refinery at Jamnagar accounts for over 25% of India's total refining capacity and their plant at Hazira is the biggest chemical complex in India. The company further diversified into Telecom, Insurance and Internet Businesses, the Power Sector etc. Dhirubhai Ambani took Reliance public in 1977, and by 2007 the combined fortune of the family (sons Anil and Mukesh) was 60 billion dollars.

After severe differences between two sons, Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani, the group was divided between them in 2006. The Reliance empire was split with Mukesh Ambani getting RIL and IPCL & his younger sibling Anil Ambani heading Reliance Capital, Reliance Energy and Reliance Infocomm. The entity headed by Mukesh Ambani is referred to as the Reliance Industries Limited whereas Anil's Group has been renamed Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG).. Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, range from, communications (Reliance Communications) and financial services (Reliance Capital Ltd), to generation, transmission and distribution of power (Reliance Energy), infrastructure and entertainment (BigFM, Big TV, Zapak).

Dhiru Bhai Ambani:

Think big, Think fast,Think ahead, ideas are no ones monopoly

Dhirubhai Ambani was the most enterprising Indian entrepreneur. His life journey is reminiscent of the rags to riches story. He is remembered as the one who rewrote Indian corporate history and built a truly global corporate group. Assisted by his two sons, Mukesh and Anil, Dhiru Bhai Ambani built India's largest private sector company, Reliance India Limited, from a scratch. He was married to Kokilaben and had two sons Mukesh and Anil and two daughters Dipti and Nina. To see some of his personal photgraphs Click here

Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani was born on 28 December 1932, in Chowad(Gujarat), in family of very moderate means. He was the second son of a school teacher. When he was 16 years old, Dhirubhai started off as a small time worker with Arab merchants in Aden. In 1958 he moved to Mumbai start his own business in spices. After making modest profits, he moved into textiles and opened his mill near Ahmedabad.Dhirubhai started the brand "Vimal"(named after his elder brother Ramaniklal Ambani's son, Vimal Ambani).After that it was a saga of expansions and successes.

Dhirubhai Ambani is credited with starting the equity cult in India. More than 58,000 investors from various parts of India subscribed to Reliance's IPO in 1977. Reliance Industries was the first private sector company whose Annual General Meetings were held in stadiums. In 1986, The Annual General Meeting of Reliance Industries was held in Cross Maidan, Mumbai and was attended by more than 35,000 shareholders and the Reliance family. His funeral procession in July 2002, was not only attended by business people, politicians and celebrities but also by thousands of ordinary people. To know more about Dhirubhai ambani checkout following links: Dhirubhai (on BeMoneyAware.com) , Dhirubhai.net , icmrindia: Case Study and Rediff

KokilaBen DhiruBhai Ambani

Kokilaben Dhiru Bhai Ambani is the wife of Dhirubhai Ambani. She came into limelight in 2005 when she settled the dispute between her sons on "Reliance" ownership issue. As , Nina Kothari(Daughter of Dhiru Bhai) emphasised, "People keep saying it is my brothers Mukesh and Anil, who are directly connected to Dhirubhai, because they have his genes and will carry the family name forward, but I'd like to say it is equally our mother's genes that have shaped all of us....and we are extremely proud of her today." Media follows the activities of Kokilaben, her birthday celebration, Photogalleryon times of india, She comes across as head of the Reliance family, keeping them together

Having lived and learned with Dhirubhai for close to half a century, Kokilaben is uniquely placed to tell the story of his life and his meteoric rise in business as well as personal life. She was assisted in the book by daughter Dipti (Ambani) Salgaocar, who worked with her mother in conceptualising and putting the 300-page tome together. The memoirs depict the life of Dhirubhai Ambani, beginning with his childhood in the village of Chorwad to his early youth in the 1950s as a migrant worker in Aden, then a British Colony, to his later years as one of India's great industrial visionaries. It comprises rare pictures of places and people associated with Dhirubhai as well as intimate personal anecdotes of his life and work. The memoirs have been simultaneously published in English and Gujarati. While the English version is titled "Dhirubhai Ambani: The Man I Knew", the Gujarati edition is named “DHIRUBHAI AMBANI :MAARA JEEVAN SATHI". To know more about the book, Click here

Talking of the reasons behind her decision to write on Dhirubhai, Kokilaben said in a media release: "I felt all these facts from his life should be recorded for posterity. The world has seen him as a successful industrialist; but I have seen him in the role of an excellent man. I wanted to draw his personality as a humane individual, and that's how I was inspired to write this book." . Reference:Book release on reliance ADAG website

Mukesh Ambani

Mukesh Ambani is the richest Indian in the world. His wealth is valued at $ 29.0 Billion by Forbes Magazine, making him the world's 4th richest person and Asia's wealthiest person. He is the chairman, managing director of Reliance Industries, India's largest private sector enterprise.He was born on April 19, 1957 in Aden, Yemen and he is based in Mumbai. He is the son of Shri Dhirubhai H. Ambani, Founder Chairman of Reliance. He is married to Nita Ambani and has 3 children, Aakash, Anant and Isha. To know more about the man Click here

His father DhiruBhai Ambani, who had never finished high school and worried that his children might grow up too pampered, hired a tutor whose responsibility was to spend three hours a day taking Mukesh, and later his siblings, on working-class field trips: riding public transportation, buying tickets at the rail station. Once a year, the tutor arranged a visit to a village for about two weeks.

He was educated at Abaay Morischa School in Mumbai and completed his graduation with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Bombay. When Mukesh Ambani enrolled in an M.B.A. program at Stanford, his father clung to the belief that real learning came in the trenches, not in academic enclaves like Palo Alto. He summoned Mr. Ambani home in 1980, halfway through the two-year program, to take charge of a yarn manufacturing project. Mukesh Ambani joined Reliance in 1981 and was the brain behind Reliance's backward integration from textiles into polyester fibres and further into petrochemicals. World's largest grassroots petroleum refinery at Jamnagar is the brainchild of Mukesh Ambani. He was also the incharge of Dhirubhai's dream project Reliance Infocomm.

Nita Ambani:Mukesh Ambani's wife

Nita Ambani is married to Mukesh Ambani and has three children Eisha, Akash and Anant . She is a multifaceted personality, owner of Mumbai Indians, running DhiruBhai Ambani International school , a bharatnatyam dancer and comes across as the women very much in love with Mukesh. In her words, "Mukesh calls me his true life partner.... I just enjoy being Mukesh's wife." And while lots could be written about her accomplishments, Nita says she would like to be remembered as "a good mom first, and then a good human being who tried to make a difference." To know about Nita Ambani's family life Click here , her thoughts on money Click here and Click here .

In December 2009, she and Mukesh completed 25 years of being together. Ask her, in this age of affairs and divorces, how the two have managed to keep it together and she reveals, "First and foremost, we are great friends. Both of us have very different operating styles, but we value each other's opinions. We are willing to listen to each other, which I think is very important in a relationship" . To know about how Kokilaben chose Nita and how Mukesh proposed Click here

Nita is known to be ambitious and focused. She is fastidious enough to forgo sleep ( bedtime is between 1 30am and 2 30am), and gets up at 6 30 am, to hit the road running after supervising all the various dabbas and diets( Mukesh's, her own, her kids).She arrives at her school at 8:10am, so that the schoolkids can't say, But maam , you are late yourself!"Her kids are also her eyes and ears and she values their "fearless and frank feedback" Used to cat- napping in the car, she says, it is the only - I wait to have dinner with Mukesh, no matter how late he comes home. We often eat after midnight.

DhiruBhai Ambani International School was started by Nita Ambani in March 2003. It is a modern, state-of-the-art LKG-12 school that offers the finest facilities for well-rounded education, growth and development of children. To know more about the school DhiruBhai School

Antilla: Mukesh Ambani House

Antilla is the house being built by Mukesh Ambani and it's price is tagged at $ 2 Billion. It is named after the mythical island andis World's First Billion Dollar Home. The residence tower stands on Mumbai's Altamount Road on an acre site. The architects are Perkins + Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates , the designers behind the Mandarin Oriental, based in Dallas and Los Angeles.

The 27-story building is eco-friendly, with hydroponically grown plants cooling the building. The first six floors will be reserved for parking alone, and that too for cars belonging only to Mukesh's family. Space for a total of 168 imported cars has been earmarked here. Atop parking lots, Antilla's living quarters begin at a lobby with nine elevators, as well as several storage rooms and lounges.The top floors of entertaining space, where Ambani plans to host business guests (or just relax) offer panoramic views of the Arabian Sea. The four floors at the top, just below the hellipad that provides a view of the Arabian Sea and a superb view of the city's skyline, is where Mukesh with his wife Neeta, their three kids and Mukesh's mother Kokilaben, will reside. Nearly 600 people would attend to the six in the family. To see some of the rooms Click here . Reference

Anil Ambani

Anil Ambani (born June 4, 1959) is an Indian business baron and a major shareholder in Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani(ADA) Group. With an estimated personal wealth of $13.7 billion(as on March 2010), he is the fourth richest Indian in the world, behind Mukesh Ambani, Lakshmi Mittal and Azim Premji. Along with older brother Mukesh, inherited fortune from their late father, renowned industrialist Dhirubhai Ambani. To know more about the man Click here and here. These are snippets from his interview in 2002 on rediff.com For entire interiew Reference:Rediff.com in 2002

Anil Ambani did his Bachelors in Science from the University of Bombay and Masters in Business Administration from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania(USA). He joined Reliance in 1983 as Co-Chief Executive Officer. He pioneered India Inc's forays into overseas capital markets. After the split in Reliance Group, Anil Ambani founded Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. His Group has interests in telecom, power, infrastructure, financial services and entertainment, which include: Reliance Communications, Reliance Capital, Reliance Energy and Reliance Natural Resources Limited. , Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital and Medical Research Institute (KDAH). KDAH is a 730-bedded private hospital in Andheri, Mumbai was opened on 26th Janurary 2009. It's first patient was Hrithik Roshan. To see products some of his companies at Click here
He is married to Tina Munim, an actress and has two sons, Jai Anmol and Jai Anshul. Anil's close friend circle includes Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan and politician Amar Singh, among many other prominent Indian socialities, filmstars and businessmen. He likes to eat Kesar pista ice cream at India Gate.
Anil Ambani runs 100 km a week. Five days a week, the Indian tycoon runs on an indoor treadmill, and on the sixth day he runs outdoors. He also takes part in the Mumbai Marathon. He took up running at the suggestion of his father. The elder Ambani told him: "You can buy any luxury in life, but you can't buy health." Since then, Ambani has run several marathons, including coming in second at the Mumbai Marathon, in 2004.

Tina Munim Ambani:Wife of Anil Ambani

Tina Munim is married to the industrialist Anil Ambani. Tina Munim (born February 11, 1957) was an Indian film actress who had a successful Bollywood career during the late seventies and early eighties. In 1991, she married industrialist Anil Ambani, with whom she has two sons. Today she is involved in a number of charity, arts, and talent endeavors and hasn't made any new films since 1991

Tina Munim was born in Mumbai in a well to do Gujarati-speaking family. Tina was discovered by Dev Anand who in 1978, cast her in his film "Des Pardes", which launched her film career. To know more about her films Click here

Tina met Anil sometime in the late '80s. After parental resistance finally they got married. To know about how they got married Click here They stay at Sea Wind, the Ambani's 18-storeyed residence at Cuffe Parade, south Mumbai and have two sons Jai Anshual and Jai Anmol.

She is involed in various activities such as:
Harmony Art Foundation, Tina Ambani is the founder of the, Harmony Art Foundation, an institution which supports India's emerging and established artists. To know more about the Art Foundation Click here .
The Harmony for Silvers Foundation, founded in 2004 by Tina Anil Ambani, is a non-government organisation working to enhance the quality of life of the elderly in India. To know more about the Silver Foundation Click here .
The Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital & Medical Research Institute, which became operational in the first week of 2009, is one of the country's premier healthcare initiatives in the private sector. The 750-bed hospital has over 103 full-time doctors, 520 nurses and about 200 paramedics, and growing. Website

Ambani Feud

The founder of Reliance, Dhirubhai Ambani, died in July 2002 without leaving a clear succession plan. THE public battle between the two brothers can be traced back to early November 2004. The brothers launched into a bitter and very public battle, which spanned the seven months. Lot of colourful reasons have been attributed to the discord, ranging from Anil's foray into politics with the Samajwadi Party to more gossipy ones such as the two wives not getting along. But industry observers say that at the heart of the dispute were the divergent views of the brothers on certain key initiatives. For instance,Anil doubted the viability of the Reliance Infocomm and objected to the "soft loans" being given to the telecom company. And Mukesh was sceptical about Anil's agreement with the Uttar Pradesh government to set up a Rs.11,000-crore power plant in Dadri. Refrence:Hindu newspaper

Kokilaben, eventually brokered a deal with thw help of close family friend K.V. Kamath(ICICI), divided the empire built by Dhirubhai Ambani. On June 18 2005, Kokilaben D. Ambani, announced a settlement between them by sending out a statement to the press saying: "With the blessings of Srinathji, I have today amicably resolved the issues between my two sons, Mukesh and Anil, keeping in mind the proud legacy of my husband Dhirubhai Ambani." Mother and Sons hold 30% each, with the remaining 10% divided equally between the daughters, Nina Kothari and Deepti Salgaonkar. Mukesh, was given control of Reliance's core businesses, including petrochemicals, oil and gas. He also kept the flagship company, Reliance Industries. Anil, 50, got most of Reliance's newer businesses, including telecommunications, financial services, entertainment and power.