A GENERATIONAL LEAP

RELIANCE INDUSTRIES

- M.G. Arun

Reliance Industries (RIL) chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani recently said it was time for a leadership change at India’s largest private sector company, which totted up annual revenues of Rs 5.39 lakh crore in 2020-21. Ambani, 64, has been with RIL since 1981, when his father Dhirubhai Ambani pulled him out of an MBA programme at Stanford University to help build a petrochemicals plant at Patalganga in Maharashtra. Mukesh was 24 then. Just over two decades later, in 2002, he took over the reins of RIL following Dhirubhai’s death.

Over the past few years, Ambani has been working to get his three children—twins Isha and Akash, 30, and Anant, 26—to take up leadership roles in the company. But he has also set up a framework to groom future leaders from outside the family, who can potentially leapfrog to leadership positions at an appropriate time. “Reliance is in the process of effecting a momentous leadership transition—from seniors belonging to my generation to the next generation of young leaders,” Ambani said on Reliance Family Day (December 28), an annual event to commemorate Dhirubhai’s birthday. It was quite clear he wanted to see his children take over the RIL reins, supported by a mix of professionals and family loyalists. “I have no doubt that Akash, Isha and Anant, as the nextgen leaders, will lead Reliance to even greater heights,” he said.