Ambani family
Dhirubhai Ambani began trading spices in the late 1950s before pivoting into synthetic textiles, opening Reliance's first mill in Naroda, Gujarat, in 1966 under the 'Vimal' fabric brand. The company listed publicly in 1977 as Reliance Textile Industries, then drove backward integration into polyester and petrochemicals through the 1980s — the strategy that shaped the conglomerate's later growth.
How the fortune was built
Reliance expanded through the 1990s–2000s into refining, petrochemicals, and oil and gas exploration, building the Jamnagar complex, among the largest single-site refineries in the world. After Dhirubhai's death in 2002 and a 2005 split with brother Anil, elder son Mukesh Ambani kept the energy and petrochemicals core, then launched Reliance Jio in 2016 and built Reliance Retail into India's largest retail chain. Reliance is now India's most valuable listed company.
Where the family invests today
The family's signature capital-markets move was selling minority stakes in Jio Platforms: over six weeks in 2020, Reliance raised more than $12 billion from Meta, Silver Lake, KKR, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, and Mubadala, with a parallel Reliance Retail Ventures round from KKR, Silver Lake, ADIA, and Qatar's sovereign fund. The family does not run a separate named family office; capital deployment runs through Reliance itself, increasingly into renewables and AI/data-center infrastructure.
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