Twins Isha and Akash Ambani have debuted on Fortune’s “40 Under 40” list of influential people around the globe. The Ambani siblings have been named on the list for their contribution towards turning around Reliance Industries’ consumer business– focussing on their telecom and retail sector.
“They say data is the new oil — and when it comes to Reliance Industries, India’s largest company, that’s literally the case,” Fortune said, adding the 47-year-old conglomerate amassed a fortune in petrochemicals before dominating the country”s mobile connectivity market with Jio, a low-cost wireless carrier which debuted in 2016.
Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani is the most successful businessman in the country. With a net worth of $80.5 billion, Ambani is currently the 8th richest person in the world and the only Indian in the top 10. Ambani’s children have now made a big footprint with their debut on the Fortune’s “40 Under 40” technology list.
Akash joined the company in 2014 after receiving an Economics degree from Brown University. A year later, Isha joined following stints at Yale, Stanford and McKinsey.
Fortune, in their note about the Ambani twins, said, “As Jio board members, they helped seal the company’s recent megadeal with Facebook — USD 5.7 billion for a 9.99% stake — plus major follow-on investments from marquee tech titans like Google, Qualcomm, and Intel. The flurry of investments lent the business an eye-popping USD 65 billion private valuation.”
It also said that the ‘glam siblings’ are now training — along with their younger brother, Anant, 25, a more recent addition to Jio’s board — to take on their father’s empire. “A major proving ground will be e-commerce,” it said.
Recently, Akash and Isha helped launch JioMart, a venture that aims to challenge Amazon and Walmart”s Flipkart for command of India”s massive and fast-growing online shopping market.
Along with the Ambani siblings, ed-tech startup Byju’s founder Byju Raveendran has also featured on the list. Regarding Raveendran, Fortune said he has shown the world that it really is possible to build a massively successful online education company.
