It was the party to end all parties.
A three-day extravaganza organized by Asia’s richest man to celebrate the engagement of his youngest son.
A $6 million backdrop from Rihanna. A star-studded guest list that includes Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Ivanka Trump, not to mention heads of state, Bollywood stars, sports icons and rappers.
The maximum demonstration of wealth and power. God knows what the royal wedding has in store.
But behind the bank-busting bonanza in Jamnagar lies a fight for India’s largest company, and a fight that could dictate the fate of the emerging superpower for decades to come.
Asia’s richest family: The Ambanis pose for a photo at Akash Ambani’s (center) wedding anniversary in Mumbai in 2019. Father Mukesh is chairman of Reliance Industries, worth an estimated $112 billion. He has announced that he will hand over power to his three sons, including Akash, his daughter Isha (third from right) and Anant (second from left).
The succession plan has attracted new attention following lavish celebrations ahead of youngest son Anant’s $152 million wedding in Jamnagar over the weekend.
The succession plan has attracted new attention following lavish celebrations ahead of youngest son Anant’s $152 million wedding in Jamnagar over the weekend. Anant in the center photo with father Mukesh on the left.
Rihanna kicked off the festivities with a two-hour performance for which she was reportedly paid $6.3 million.
The source of all this is Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, a corporate giant that deals in everything from energy to textiles and telecommunications.
The company is worth $112 billion, according to Forbes, making it the 11th largest in the world.
Ambani isn’t a household name in America, but it should come as no surprise that some of America’s biggest players attended the family’s final party.
Zuckerberg’s Target invested $5.7 billion in Jia Platforms, the telecom arm of Reliance, in 2020.
At the time, the social media giant described India as having “one of the most dynamic social and economic transformations the world has ever seen.”
A press release from the company noted that more than 560 million Indians have connected to the Internet in the last five years.
In February, Reliance signed a “binding pact” for a merger deal with Disney, whose CEO Bob Iger was also at Anant’s party over the weekend.
Reliance is the largest company in the world’s fastest growing economy. If you want to invest in the future, here it is.
And it is Ambani’s children who will have a big influence on his appearance.
In August, Mukesh, 66, told shareholders he would spend the next five years grooming his three sons to take over the company, marking the beginning of the end of more than two decades in charge.
Each heir has been assigned executive roles in various branches of the company as they strive to prove themselves worthy successors.
Twins Isha and Akash, both 31, have been put in charge of retail and digital services respectively, while Anant, 28, focuses on the company’s renewable energy transition.
But as the youngest of the trio, he is struggling to make up for lost time.
While the soft-spoken Akash has served as a director on the board of Reliance Retail Ventures since October 2014, Anant has only been with the family business for half a dozen years.
He was the only one of the three brothers who faced opposition to his father’s proposal to appoint him to the company’s board of directors.
In October, two proxy advisory firms recommended that shareholders vote against Anant’s promotion, Bloomberg reported.
Institutional Shareholder Services cited “concerns” about their “limited leadership/board experience” but supported Isha and Akash’s appointments.
He echoed the recommendations of Mumbai-based Institutional Investor Advisory Services (IIAS), which said that at “28 years of age”, Anant’s promotion “does not align with our voting guidelines”.
IIAS also endorsed Isha and Akash.
The three were ultimately voted in by an overwhelming majority, but the warnings nonetheless underscored doubts about whether Anant was up to the job.
Bride and groom-to-be Anant Ambani (right) with Radhika Merchant at the inauguration of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Center in March 2023
Anant has also suffered from health problems since childhood, something he has compared to ‘the pain of thorns’.
Steroid treatment for chronic asthma resulted in massive weight gain, and her mother Nita opened up about her struggle with obesity in 2017.
Despite this, Nita and Mukesh have done everything they can to give their children a similar start in life.
They all earned degrees from American universities: Isha has degrees from Stanford and Yale, while the boys have bachelor’s degrees from Brown.
His father’s careful succession planning is part of an attempt to avoid the complicated power struggle he faced when his grandfather (and Reliance founder), Dhirubhai Ambani, died without a will in 2002.
It triggered an ugly public clash between Mukesh and his younger brother Anil, forcing their mother to intervene and split the business.
The test of the younger generation at the top comes at another critical time in the family business.
The dependence, based on fossil fuels, is trying to transform itself into green energy and digital superpower.
In 2021, Mukesh signaled his commitment to the new leadership with a pledge of $10 billion for clean energy and fuels.
But investors are not so sure. Reliance Industries shares have lost value since then.
The day Mukesh announced he was handing the business over to his sons, the stock fell to its lowest point in more than a month.
The lavish displays of love, however, are increasing.
The three-day extravaganza saw guests including Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, jetted to Jamnagar, Gujarat, in India.
Bill Gates and Paula Hurd were among the VIP guests at the three-day extravaganza.
Zuckerberg speaks with Gates and Hurd during Ambani and Merchant’s pre-wedding celebrations
Just five years ago, the billionaire organized the most expensive wedding ever held in India for Isha.
Beyoncé headlined the multi-destination wedding that took place in Lake Como, Mumbai and Rajasthan.
However, Mukesh reportedly threw an additional $50 million into Anant’s warm-up event.
The rising sums are more likely to be due to the tycoon’s desire to outdo himself, rather than any outward show of favouritism.
However, Anant knows which side the bread is buttered on.
“I deeply respect my parents and they are my gurus,” he said during an impassioned speech in 2018.
“Trust is my life.”