Mukesh Ambani: Asia’s richest person
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from the BBC world service? This is world of secrets season by finding mr. fox. Search for world of secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Welcome to good, bad billionaire, the BBC world service. Each episode we pick up billion .

aire and find out how they made their money.

and then we judge them are a good.

bad or just another author in poddar ter.

And this week's billionaire, the richest person in india, mukh eboni, worth a staggering one hundred and fifteen billion dollars.

He is the person who funded a truly lavish wedding, which he made in pictures .

off recently. Yeah, ana was the wedding act.

Kim cardan, boris Johnson, tony black Marks bug.

They were also in a cool six hundred million dollars that is quite a waiting bash.

and twenty million dollars of that we spent on flowers. Kids.

how can you spend twenty million dollars on flowers?

It's a lot of flowers.

a five thousand past main wedding. But IT went on for months.

There was a post wedding celebration, a wedding celebration and a pre wedding celebration. And this wasn't even his wedding IT was .

his son's wedding, I know. But weirdly, the fact of the day, I think for me is that six hundred million dollars, our billionaire mu k money spent a smaller percentage of his own wealth, the most indians spend on their family weddings.

So think about IT as .

indian we go. IT was a cheap wedding at six hundred million dollars. He also built the worlds most expensive private residents, a twenty seven story skyscrapers home called antia, which is named after a mythical island in .

the atlantic. And IT includes get this three helicopter parts, a ballroom and ice cream, a snowing that pumps out artificial snowflakes, and six stories of underground parking for all those supercars.

Yes, the house itself cost between one and two billion dollars. So his home would make our list.

If you look at pictures of IT on the internet, IT looks like stacks and stacks of air conditioning units power on top of each other. IT looks a bit like a supervillain .

home really does. So where did mukh Amber I get this kind of cash as fortune comes from? Something reliance industries, a company founded by his father.

Now we mostly cover self made fortunes on this podcast, but micah's father, dabba, was a billionaire. It's a very interesting story because .

he wasn't a billionaire. So mccain wasn't born into the billionaire lifestyle at first.

No, says father began reliance trading polyster, but we cash grew the company into a conglomerate now includes everything from oil and gas, petrol, chemicals, telecoms, media and financial services .

and anything where there is a story of succession. You get entries, you get fuel.

is a story of sibling river. So the bitter field between mukesh and his brother anew has been described as a service tragedy.

We'll tell the story of that battle.

control of reliance. So is my cash good, bad? Or just another billion? Aire will find out.

right? Let's go back to the beginning. Mukh was born in one thousand nine hundred and fifty seven. The other is to four children. There were two boys and two girls in a gujarat hindu family.

His parents moved from india to find work in yemen, which is where he was born. And we know that his dad will become a billiam b but he wasn't anywhere near that.

When he was born, his father had been third son of a village teacher. He'd never finished high school. He'd worked as a petrol pum attended, later becoming an oil company.

Clark, but he damped of starting his own business. So when mash was just one, he moved a family back to mumbai and founded ons, which imported spices. And Young.

We talk about in this podcast about people who are well place that important moments, because polyester had just been invented for the text. Silent street IT was the future of the business. Not many people understood that, but muker said, my dad did. Now, this was one thousand .

nine hundred and fifty eight, by the way. We are listening to, you know, the invention of polyus and wondering when on earth that was. And getting into trading at that time was a really brave thing to do in india, because most companies were run by a small quake of illite families. And, you know, the family had no money.

So mccain's father had a novel way to raise money. He'd noticed that the value of the silver, the actual metal in the local coins in yemen, was worth more than their face value, so he melted them down. So the sa, the difference said, I don't believe in not taking opportunities. blame.

But mu catia family wasn't rich at this point. In fact, until he was twelve, they lived in a two bedroom apartment in what's called a child, a communal tinamous building in a mumbai slum.

His brother anal, described as saying, we were seven members in the family, including my grandmother, there was a common bathroom and toilet for a hundred families together in the chill.

It's a long way away from that billion dollars is really.

I can't imagine picturing that. And the wedding we've just been describing seems like lifetime apart.

but there was a lot of hard work involved to get the family there. So my cash remembers his dad was busy working all the time and never visited a school and helped with homework. But you said, I guess when you're left on your own, you find your true potential.

And throughout machias teens, his dad business was getting ever more successful. IT become one of the largest polisa trading companies in india. IT had expanded into making police of fabric and closed in one thousand nine .

hundred and twenty five. Reliance launched them out. Clothing brand, starting with police to stories, then men's clothing. And the labor would later become iconic in india because IT was known for its adverts, features famous bollywood actors.

yeah. And in one thousand hundred and seventy seven, when banks refused to support their expansion with loans mukai, she's dad listed reliance industries in an IPO I comes up a lot in our park, cast an initial public offering where you sell their sing the company to raise cash .

and going public at that time in one thousand nine, semi seven was a relatively new thing in india. So my cashes died is actually credited with introducing the stock market to india's .

retail investors, thousand and invest, causing a bit of market boom among what was an emerging middle class in india realize his annual shareholder meetings had to be held in a football stadium and actually paved away for a kind of new share owing class, which is incredible financial resource for other indian companies to draw on.

So you super charging the way people.

basically making a of ordinary people savings for economic ventures. And that's something, for example, Margaret thatcher trying to do in the one thousand nine and eighties when SHE privatized a bunch of industries. The idea is it's not us and them like the owners and the workers. If everyone owns shares, then everyone feels like their kind of owners IT. He creates a new shareowner well phoning class of people.

Everyone can be part of the economy.

exactly. IT is the most populous country in the, it's the world's gest democracy as we know. So if you have a share and in class of people, that is, my lot of people think that ultimately india end up being the richest country in the world.

Well, it's certainly a journey that parallels much's families wealth because as their fortunes grow, the family moved out of the child and into one of mumbai best neighbor. Ods, yeah.

he was sent to in a private school where he would end up with the future billions.

But, and this is really interesting. Mccain's dad worried that his two sons, mccain, I would become .

too pampered. Red, what? cation.

So he kind of embarked on this weird, well, not weird, but unusual, program of education. He hired a tutor to give them a real life in inverted commerce at school for three hours every day. After actual school, this person would take them on working class field trips, which included taking public transport, watching sports and a two week trip to a rural village every year.

Now, mccain says of that period, he said he was one of the best things that happened to me. We went out and learn how to play hockey. We went by bus, we went by train, and we said, this is what life looks like.

And mukh s dad made his sons work for treats and luxury. So when the brothers wanted to buy expensive mangoes, he agreed only if they traveled on the lower deck of the mumbai to go a steamer. Yeah.

they said there was no reservation. Everyone was puking. These are his words. We just wanted us to go through that event because he believed there is no way we could ever buy that sort of experience.

It's really interesting when you think about what rich people consider real life experiences, like playing hockey.

going by the bus. Yes, a luca's education also includes some time at his dada's company. He said, my father share with me his passion for business and entrepreneurship very early. Even when I was in high school, I used to spend a long hours at the office on weekends.

Now, because his dad's business was in text out, everyone expected mukesh would study text out engineering at university. But he shocked his family when he chose to study chemical engineering instead.

Yeah, he said nobody had anticipated that chemicals was the direction in which reliance was headed ID chemical engineering, because IT was supposed to be the future.

And throughout his studies, mckee worked for reliance. So he says he was basically working almost full time for reliance. In his words, I finished college at two thirty pm and went straight to the office.

and he was given a lot of responsibility early on, he said, I remember we were raided. My father was in the us. I was literally in charge handling the problem. I was a bit about sixteen or seventeen.

So clearly his father trusted him quite a lot from a really Young age.

And in one thousand and eighty, moki moved to the U. S. A. To do something that is quite common among americans. IT didn't MBA a masters of business administration at stanford university.

And that is, by the way, the heart of silicon valley. So many of our billionaire have attended IT. A quite significant number .

have dropped out exactly because I said our class and faculty without standing, we had nobel. Larry bill sharp, he was a professor. Financial economics, he made a great impact on the, and he started by asking, how do you make a difference to the world?

But while Mickey was enjoying stanford, his dad was pushing ahead with a new plan for reliance athwart integration approach. He wanted to open a plant to manufactured polyster yan rather than importing IT from someone else.

If you're all making wind, you bring in the steel and you make IT into a widget vertical investigation, saying you are in the steel company too. So rather than basic buying in the polias to fibers, he's building a factory to .

make the politics of manufacturing .

process is different. Whether that's a good idea, sometimes people say, just do what you're all good at. Don't do the other thing too much Better if people specialized in different things, the idea of the conglomerate un more bits of the manufacturing supply.

So in one thousand hundred and eighty, reliance got a hard one license to a manufactured polya yan ahead of other wealthy business family. So they had an edge .

in the competition. There were rumors that this success of getting this license linked to a lavish party hosted by mccain's dad to celebrate india gandhi one thousand nine hundred and eighty election Victory as prime minister.

So mckee was called back home by the family. half. We saw that two year program at stanford. Mckey actually asked to start to wait until you finish studies, but then realized his dad will essentially push ahead without him. So he decided to .

lease time ford to come back immediately, which makes him out in a they bring the cofounder of google. That's this season alone.

So essentially, what we've learned so far as if you go to university and you are thinking of becoming a billionaire of the things that might make you a millionaire, the attitude you have to dropping .

out exactly if you finish your studies, you've got much less chance being successful, which kind of the opposite of whatever once told by their parents, right?

So this was the first project that Mickey was given to run himself.

And a real life example of this vertical integration, his father gives him eighty course. Rupee said about a hundred million dollars his father gave at him said, go away and build me a polya yarn manufacturing plant.

Interesting in moco also said he gave me the full freedom, the ability to bet the house, and that is an interesting billionaire.

Try to be willing to lose everything in Better the house Green. So he gave him a boss. His name is risk k. By mesu ani, who had been running the police to business, importing the police to five, selling IT onto the style of milk. So he's got kind of a minder, if you like.

So mccahill was dedicated. He sleep in a trailer onsite in the village where the plant was being built. And actually one business association set of the time.

I found him an extremely receptive listener who was learning all the time he virtually capped out. There is very unusual for any leader that i've dealt. Yeah.

a close friend of the Amber I said, mache is a guy who likes to get his hands dirty. His a shopkeeper in many ways. He wants to sit at the till.

He wants to see what's going on. And the polyster plant was actually built on schedule and went into production in a record eighteen months. So clearly camping out in nature.

he seen the job through. Now profits are rising, but the one thousand nine hundred eighty were actually tRicky time for markets because reliance faced a series of allegations around market manipulation from both the government and the media. Although investigations never found anything to pursue.

then in one thousand nine hundred and eighty five, mashes boss at the time received by miss anne died and in thousand nine hundred eighty six, mukesh dad had a stroke which took him months to recover from.

So he's gone from three of us running the business, mckee says. For some time I suddenly became alone. He's in charge and we cash.

And significantly, his brother ano assumed day to day control of the company. And by this point is, and yes, yeah.

it's got assets worth early a billion dollars, although had three million shareholders, remember. So the wealth is spread around little bit now it's .

difficult to find out how much money mukh have been earning over the years while working for his dad at reliance. But by one thousand nine hundred eighty eight, mckay, he had joined reliance as board of directors. And reliance was known to pay high .

dividends and bonuses. So IT seems pretty safe to best thing that by at the time of his early thirties, mu cash has made a million. He's a millionaire by his early thirties.

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So let's take a moment to discuss mckee, the man beyond the business and beyond those initial millions.

Yeah, he's a practicing hindu. He doesn't drink, smoke or gamble.

He is a vegetarian with a legendary appetite, but for indian street food rather than fancy restaurants. So maybe that real life education are paid off.

And on his personal life, in one thousand and eighty five, eight, twenty eight, he had an arrange marriage to need to allow .

his dad had seen needed dance one day. He was actually a trained dancer in classical indian dance, and he actually tracked on her number for his son.

yeah. He was also a school teacher and had one condition for the marriage that he could continue to teach.

Meter said. Sunflower nursery paid me eight hundred rupees of a month, which was around sixty five dollars at the time, and all that salary was mine. IT paid for our dinners. People used to laugh at me at that time, but he gave me a lot of satisfaction.

But like his father, rita also wanted to show my cash. The real side of mumbai, they insisted they would take the bus rather in his posh Mercedes.

And publicly, Michael cut a low profile because by the early nineteen, his brother and now had become the public face of reliance, giving interviews and speaking to journals. Although.

as will find out this one last, this won't last. No, and just give a bit context here at the time because we've talked before about moments where you're very well placed in the country's evolution.

We took about jack mar when china was growing in power and the internet commerce is growing, the indian economy is changing at the time, the early ninety saw the end of what people called something called the license rage, which is a decade long system in which the government maintained control of industries through licenses. The licenses really hard to get. Getting hold of one was really difficult. So people often thought I was a hot bed of potential corruption.

And for mockest is actually a key moment for reliance, because the company had been accused of unfairly benefiting from the system. And now that I was no longer in place, he needed to show that the company could thrive without IT and to grow.

He was again looking at vertical backward integration up the supply chain of police declared, as his father had done in one thousand and eighty. So one note back up the chain of polymers and poly esta is actually petrochemicals and oil.

Yes, you can't make polisa without IT. So first, reliance open, a petrol chemical plant, manufacturing a range of because polymers and polyaenus. And by ninety ninety five, reliance industries was india's largest private firm. And in nineteen ninety six, do rui ambani, an family are listed as billiards by forbes with one point one billion dollars.

So that is still officially ahead of the company. Mache es una IT with his brother. So they are going to hold off decline more cash himself, a billion.

They are just yet. But they're about to make a very, very big move into oil in india.

All industry had been nationalized in the one thousand seventies, but there have been declining production and development. The government was ready for privatization of their industry by the middle ties.

And mukh had big plans for this, right? He planned to build a refinery toys the size of any other in india, because he first saw the growing demand for refined Peter lean products in india and also globally.

And consultants engaged said the project wasn't really viable. IT wouldn't make money, was too expensive. But mckee micromanage the construction four times a week. For three years, he flew the three and half hours on a tiny propel plane from mumbai to the site in gna.

so need to often joined him. And he actually end up setting up a school in and ga. Ga was reportedly their sons third word after mummy and pop, which means, but I imagine that the all .

third word come, that is the name of an old refinery. IT opened in nineteen ninety nine. IT cost three point four billion dollars, but that was thirty percent less than a similar refinery bp had built in malaysia.

Now, with the success of the oil refinery, mash had the idea to diversify further, this time beyond polyester. yeah.

In nineteen ninety nine, during his usual half of our bedtime chat with his father, mccaw brought up the idea of getting into the telecoms business, specifically broadband and mobile. And this, as we know, looking back to explode.

a very canny decision, seems to have a nap for just spotting, right? Just inserting himself at just the right time yeah.

And having enough money to exploit those opportunities is really important, right?

Because all of us can sit around and say, oh, I think A I is going to be a big thing .

in the next year. What do about IT?

Yeah, well, you don't have the money to invest and i'm afraid.

or left out in the cold exactly. So look, ash's father said the Price of long distance mobile calls were too expensive to make IT work. But if you can make every indian talk to every indian at less than the cost of a postcard and still make money, you are in business.

So in two thousand, they announced plan to roll out badman to, what, one hundred and fifteen in india, investing three billion dollars over two years.

And to raise those funds, they sold a slice about thirteen percent of reliance petroleum to overseas investors. And that was thought to have basically raised about seven hundred and fifty million dollars.

And this was really the start of turning reliance into a conglomerate. Because in two thousand and one, they also got into biotech and insurance.

Yes, I think the two massive things that really propelled motion as the super wealthy status yesterday are those moves into oil and telecoms. That's the meeting, sam.

Think it's so interesting because you kind of think, you know, as you pointed out, some critics says, why can't you just focus one thing you do and do IT really, really well and make money from that? But IT seems like to supercharge your wealth, you need to get into a lot of industries that might not seem connected. The immediate listener.

it's actually not an unusual thing in some asian countries. In places south korea, you have these big congruent, which have cross holdings and lots of different industries. In india, there is a group, le tarter and jugular landrover.

IT wants consulting services. IT downs still works. It's not an unusual structure for an asian, very rich family.

But as we ve talked about, a family business also opens you up to family tragedies. Because something happened in two thousand, two, that would rock the family. Mukh is dad to rubi, and bi died at the age of sixty nine following a stroke.

The funeral procession took more than an out travel of two kilometers to the criteria. There were laid crown as crowds thronging in their thousands.

and he left behind a beer th in. At the time of his death, reliance had an annual turnover of about fifteen billion dollars.

These are some crazy start here. IT manufactured three percent of india's GDP was responsible for five percent of the country's exports. If you would translate that into the us.

us. Economy is twenty trillion. So one percent is twenty billion. The numbers of stretch herc for one company to be that significant to a country the size of india is .

amazing for one company and for one family. And this is really interesting. Darabi died without leaving a well, which meant that mccahill, stan's personal property, went to his wife, but the business wasn't as clear cut.

Oh, I see trouble and horizon here, don't you? Um in less than a month of their father's death, new cash becomes chain managing director of reliance industry. His brother annual becomes vice chairman.

The brothers jointly have inherited ted a fortune in two thousand and three. Forbes to business magazine jointly list them as billion's. Yeah.

they have a combined network of two point eight billion dollars that makes them the hundred and twenty third richest family in the world. So even sharing that with his brother, mu keh is a billionaire, two thousand and three.

But as we've hinted, with more money comes more problems .

yeah the time of his succession, we cash said there was no ambiguity from his father's legacy and insisted that he was the final authority on all matters concerning reliance.

I mean, talk about teeing up a conflict because muh, at the age of and his brother, and know at the age of forty five, are about to bitterly field for control of reliance. Q, the succession thing.

I can hear a little tinkle of the piano right now. Let's compare these two brothers. What are their qualities?

What do we know about them? So mckee was described as conservative, severable, retton and a working holic.

Remember, he doesn't drink, smoker, gamble and the other herds from doo in the line, light hanging out with bollywood ood stars and politicians, two very different characters.

So as chairman, we cash set to work making changes to the company. First, he swapped himself in as a company's public speaker, a job that I knew had been doing for years.

I bet he loved IT sure not going again. He was reported that the cash tried to oust anal from the board of the company.

Now rumors were swelling, but their field only really became public in two thousand and four when we cash admitted in A T. V interview. There are issues which are ownership issues. These are the private domain. But as far as reliance are concern, IT is a very, very strong professional company.

so doing his best to reassure all fine. But by two thousand and five, IT clearly got so bad behind the scenes that their mother had to intervene. SHE broke up a deal to split the conglomerate between the two brothers, with the companies divided up in a demerger.

Quite a big move that so we cash took on the industrial businesses, so petrol, chemicals, all in gas refining, textiles and ano got the newer ones, telecoms, electric power, entertainment and banking.

Now if you had to dealt those cards out to me, I would said the animal has got the Better cards there. Telecoms, entertainment, banking, those are, you know, I would say, those pretty good businesses to own pet chemicals, oil and gas, highly cash generated and a lack of stuff, but not exactly the businesses of the future.

No, not exactly cutting edge. And then show IT didn't really go down well in times of p. mh.

But anyway, they're got their own little empires. And in two thousand, six vocation anal, with listed separately on forbes, which is the list we often look to to calibrate people's wealth. Mukh is fifty six richest in the world, with eight point five billion. Anal is one hundred and fourth with five point seven billion.

But the field was only just getting started. And ano goes to war so that all starts of his company chAllenging a gas contracts and the new cases company during the split yeah .

and then accuses a government minister of being in league with his brother. Animals company buys newspaper ads in thirty three national newspapers, making these allegations taking IT very public.

That's a lot of people looking at those claims and also found as a two billion dollar defamation cy against new cash for reMarks he made during interview with the new york times.

Yes, because the new york times have described alliances, intelligence agency and network of lobby's spies, a new delhi, who say they collect data about the vulnerabilities, the powerful, about the my new shy of bureaucrat schedules and about the activities of their competitors.

So we cash had responded to the paper that all these activities were overseen by his brother before the split. Yeah.

they said we emerged all of that. So things weren't good between them, despite living the same family block, they encounter each other at family events as reported, they did not talk to each other during period.

and a friend of the family actually told the telegraph newspaper in the U. K. Sometimes they are forced to shake hands, but they do not look each other.

talk about but this field, and was not just hurtful for the family. IT could have been bad for the business because mack had just become the richest person in india. He and animal were fifth and six richest in the world. And fearing that their few could have an impact on the market, indian finance minister declared that a matter of national interest for the brothers to resolve their dispute. Private leads, bit like getting .

a way suspect together ah really is not just a matter of brother ly hurt and anger, but also a matter of national importance. So they end up in the supreme court in in nine of the gas spill and the court rules in macias favor. So that's one point from A H I S.

Mom steps as a peace accord, if you agreement in twenty ten. And ani withdrew his defamation suit, ano said.

We've parted on a very cordial al, and investors should have no fear whatsoever. It's a new beginning for me, and going forward, i'm sure my cash will do extremely well. It's funny how the mom always seem to step into, yeah kind of sort this out.

Anything happen with the cases reunion, the mom role to play there anyway. So i'm saying i'm sure my cash will do extremely well. Which he went on to do, unlike anal. So IT really .

was the beginning of the end for him, because by two and nineteen, ano had gone from being to six richest person on the planet with forty two billion, to falling off the billion. Airlift.

completely seal. We do have time to go into exactly why he had such a stress herc collapse in wealth. But his company, analyst company, was eighty million dollars in debt. He become one of the fastest destroyers of shared value in the .

last hundred years of known. And anna was actually facing jail time if he didn't pay off the step. So mckee .

actually stepped in and paid IT .

off for him. great. That sounds a mm.

either resh, definitely possible, aggressive. It's that i'll pay the bill for you. Thanks a lot, bro.

In twenty twenty annual declared personal bankrupcy in the U. K. Court over, the judge said clearly as more assets or income than these letting on.

Mckee, on the other hand, has gone from strength to strength. So he's getting on in the sectors that anna was actually .

fAiling in yeah launch something called reliance geo um a telecoms company in twenty sixteen. And that actually partly contributed to the downfall of analyzing is existing telecoms .

because Michael as company is slashed Prices and invest in 4g technology， while anos company was struggling with old systems and now geo has more than four hundred and seventy million subscribers.

Very interesting tactic that you ve got new technology. So you've got an advantage that you come in. You cut Prices really aggressively to have a kind of land grab get market share. Then once you got the market share, you can start dying up the Price just a little bit. But you go and so obvious ly killed off the competition.

It's not unlike what companies like uber do, right? You kind of slash Prices, make IT cheaper than .

ever to use the company. yeah. And then when you have market dominance, for example, if you see that same same of thing, you make something that people can live without, and then you starts as a slowly rich in the Price.

So this year in twenty twenty form mukee's, reliance actually joined forces of disney to create a streaming service in india with the idea to dominate netflix and prime video. So they trying to have that land grab of the streaming.

Yeah, he's now the richest person in asia. He's got a staggering one hundred and fifteen billion dollars.

and he also has plans to enter e commerce with the aim of chAllenging global giants like amazon and wolmar. So we wish is clearly not want to rest on his .

laurels given the economic c expansion of a india and given their incredibly dominant role in many of these industries. I'm gonna stick my neck out and say, in five years time murkison Bonnies gonna, the richest person in the world.

Oh, that's an interesting prediction. Let's come back in five years .

and see if you're right. Okay, there's so many new billion ares being formed all the time, we will probably still began with a bit luck.

hopefully fingers cross. So one former employee said of mukh, he wants to be netflix, he wants to be alibaba. He wants to be everything.

And that's the thing about billionth. They just have insatiable appetite for more. As we've often said, you got to five ten million.

I'm out of here yeah. But if you want to get to five ten billion while you have more, we bony exactly.

So we got to judge him. We ve got to go through our cash gery um and score him out of ten to find out whether is good, bad or just another billion. And we always start with just the numbers.

the wealth. So in before the embarras I family was valued as equivalent to ten percent of india's GDP. According to one bock's report. Mu cash personally would be about three percent of the G D.

P. Of india. Not so be three percent of GDP. That is three percent of everything you spend, make, do in a country.

All the economic activity in a whole country, three percent. Now if this is the U. S that's about twenty trillion in GDP.

So one percent is two hundred billion, so three percent with six hundred billion. So IT to be that rich compared to your country, some in the us. Would have six hundred billion, which is more than double what anyone is going to the moment.

I mean, it's a lot of economic activity. Be responsible. No wonder the finance minister said IT was of national importance. So when we can just saw a spat with his brother.

I mean, we have rules in the U. K. That the government can borrow more than three percent of GDP to make the book's baLance. That's the deficit for an own entire. Anyway, despite a lack cash, he claimed in twenty twenty three mash, that money didn't drive him so he says.

is dad said, if you start anything just to make money, you are fool because you'll never make any money or be a billionaire. If you start with purpose, and if your purpose is you want to be the best in the world, you want to do what nobody else has done, then money is a byproduct, and the byproduct should never be in point. I still follow his advice.

yeah. And the in this cash gory on wealth is not just how much they have about how they spend IT. And just going back to that six hundred million dowel.

ding, as you said, the six hundred million was proportional, lower than what the average wealth indian family would spend on their wedding.

He spent not point five percent of his network on the wedding. Parents in india spend on average between five and fifteen percent of their worth on their child's wedding. Said by his standards, IT was a cheap. I mean, having said that, what a skate. I still feel .

like building a personal skye scraper with an ice cream polar artificial snow ah a staff of hundred ds that still ratched him up in the world.

I can't think more spending our le series. Expensive home in the world, which has got a helicopter pads, six floors of parking at six hundred staff. I mean, he know is how to spend IT that's face IT.

I mean, he scores really highly for me. I think I would give him maybe even .

a night out like I was head towards nine. I I mean, I can't give him ten because he is not the richest person we've had on. But i'm getting solid nine. And like I say, I predict he's going to be the richest in the world.

So they'll be a lot more fancy. Sky scrape is being .

built for the eboni. okay? So he scores a nine on wealth, rags to riches.

This is how far they've come. We've seen some people start literally from literally rags like a winfree, for example. But this doesn't qualify anything.

Well, it's a funny one because I think if you started the kind of family line from his father yeah and the family we were literally living in, tent housing and slum housing yeah then you know maybe the journey would be further. But having said that, by the time mckee was going to school, he was key being sent to elites schools. So elite has dad worried that he was gonna out of touch? They got teacher institution, real life education. yes. yeah. So I think .

maybe it's right. If we were just doing the family, yes, they would be attend, but he were the time he's going to school. His father's already rich.

He goes up with the empire, which is growing alongside him. So i've going to give him a three on this one. Even even lower too maybe yeah.

I think i'd agree with you. I think, well, maybe even a one out of ten for me because clearly he got zero. No, I think maybe just a one out of ten. I still think we've yet to see a true zero of ten in rags to Richard OK because he was given access to the family company but he did .

work hard for IT OK. I think you convince me to give IT a one as well as a one from both willene. Um this is what are you prepared to do to get .

ahead so this is interesting, right? So a close friend h spoke to the new york for that profile, and we cash ve got him into all that trouble with his brother. And he said, remember, these guys all grew up in the license rage.

They grew up as a notices from the filth. Very interesting image ah that makes them tough and makes them suspicious and makes them indicated at times and makes them come out in a hurry. They always see life as h god, but did not missing opportunity when they were growing up.

You didn't get a second chance yeah and also you don't have to read many books about india's past to realize that corruption has have been ever present. Spector in indian business and he feel going to go to the very, very top. A lot of people say it's unlikely you haven't had to scratch backs, pull strings.

In may twenty, twenty four indian congress chAllenged the prime minister nor rena mody to order a thorough investigation against mukh Amberley angotti I different family after he described them as holders of black money. Now what that means is loads of cash which had been taken off the, which are stored and hoarded to hide them from tax authorities. In twenty sixteen, I happen to be in india literally sitting at a bar one time, and they said, hold everything.

The reno de, the prime minister is going to make an announcement live on television, so everyone get the around. And he announced he was abolishing, banning, or five hundred and one thousand rupee notes. They will all be cancelled.

People could go in over the next couple of days to bring them in, to exchange them for new notes. IT was a direct attack on what they thought was a sort shadow economy of holding money. IT was chaos for days.

There must have been people, with some cases.

trying to bring the whole thing. There was accusations that people had warehouses full of cash, and I was not making its wings to the real economy. And IT wasn't very productive. I couldn't get the airport next day because had no notes to pay the captain with.

So it's also worth noting, however, that mody attended the embankment wedding just months after making the state you there. I mean, sadly, my invite got lost in the post.

Mca has always said he's never paid a bribe or broken a role, he told the new ork times. So these are all fables, but he has considered that are indirect ways of gaining favor. While reliance never pays the tuitions of bureaucrats children, he acknowledged that the foundations controlled by or affiliated with reliance sometimes have, in his words, given some scholarship, maybe, but that's all out in the public domain.

And in twenty fourteen, IT was revealed that reliance paid politicians one hundred thousand dollars a year for quote consultancy retainers. And in twenty twenty four, both modi and his election rival rahu gandhi accuse the other of accepting quote from loads of cash from. And bunny.

yes, so okay, you can make your rain judgments on that. All I would say is that in the U. K. Parliament there are plenty of politicians and mp who also get paid retail for consultancy services. So if that's not unique to india.

and we also have to note that when IT comes to inequality, when the lavish wedding spending came out in the press, IT was criticized really widely as a symbol of the wider and gut between the rich and the poor in india.

I think that's really resting point because there is real poverty, desperate poverty, in india.

I think actually india's income inequality is now worse than IT was under british rule.

The very existence of billionaire we've discussed in the past is sort of a symbol of crushing and inequality, and people find a obscene.

So when IT comes to villi.

how would you rate him? Gosh, 嘟嘟嘟嘟， i'm going to go straight down the middle to a five.

Well, I kind of feel like, and I think you can send this history in a river with his brother. He is a really tough Operator. And I think you know that willingness to get into telecoms in a way to .

crush crusher to .

crushes on brother, even though you know that the company is been divided specifically to give the brother the telecoms of that to me kind of indicates there's a certain slippers yeah, because, you know, these were two brothers who were ostensibly growing up to inherit the family business together. So I would give him slightly high. I would give him a six out.

Ten, O, K, fine. Six from you, five from me. philanthropy. They ve got a lot of money how much they away.

So in twenty twenty three, IT was reported that mukh ambani and family donated around fifty million dollars through the reliance foundation, which focuses on education and health care. Sounds like a lot. But when you put that into perspective.

IT actually is that is peanuts t compared to his wealth he's given away not point not six percent of his worth that was in twenty twenty three is no bill gates. He's no chuck finley.

Yeah exactly. So he's only really ranked third out of indian philanthus st. Despite him being the richest man, not in just in india .

but in asia.

It's a two for me. I mean, I would .

go as far to say even just a one OK could and then power. This is a company which generates three percent of indian GDP. That is not so he's got to be powerful.

So a twenty twenty four CNN report of india's growth as a superpower placed him as one of the three men alongside modi and fellow billionaire I as while playing a fundamental role in shaping the economic superpower india will become in the coming decades.

Yeah so he can pick up the phone anytime he likes and talked in a render body or probably any other head of state in the world, I would say. So i'm going to give him for power. He's also helping shape what modern india looks like. So i'm going to give him at nine.

Oh, interesting. I feel like I would give him an A R of ten just because, you know, he's really well known business circles. He's incredibly famous in india. But I would say that a lot of people, up until the eboni wedding stories started coming out and flooding people's news feed. A lot of people didn't know who he was.

Yeah, I guess that's true. I still think he's a move in a shaker. And whether people in the street know him in the U.

K. Or the us. Or whatever, i'm i'm willing to bet that we stops on the street in the united states. That wouldn't who he is doesn't mean he hasn't .

got enormous power. So nine from you, eight from me got IT. What about his legacy?

Um I think it's kind of too early to tell. It's gonna one of these ones where I think he's going to be the richest person in the world in a few years time. So I would say he's going to cost of huge influence over india and he's like a poster child of indian economic emergence and not .

just in one industry, in multiple industries, right? So they're changing the face of things like telecoms, text style as petrol, chemicals in one country and also the world.

Yeah, I say legacy. I work in progress, but I given an eight right now.

a solid .

aid. So then we have this awful decision we have to make. Our time is a good, bad or just another billionaire. And I was get nervous because these people say powerful. I think they're y're listening up yond some black list the rest of my life.

And you also may not get to interview them exactly.

I'm in my own journalistic chances of .

getting in the door and also the chances .

of getting invited to an well, i'm going i'll see to go first.

Well, I mean, as you've pointed out, is still very much a developing story. And he clearly has the kind of guts and motivation to go even further. He hasn't done anything quite as darkly as other billion as we've charged. Like for instance, he's not a drug traffic .

cover instance.

exactly. So I would say for now, my judgment is just another billionaire.

I agree one hundred percent because I think we have we don't know enough to call IT the other way, so either other way. So I will say he's just another billion aire when I say that, like I say, keep on I on this guy because I think he's going to be the richest personnel. It'll be between him and elon muscats s on what happens in the space race and and he's got a very good chance.

So there will be a bunny rockets in the future.

Could be, I mean, when you get to a certain about a wealth, how are you going? Na soaked up that kind of money. Just firing rockets into space is one of the most expensive things you can do.

So keep in an eye on the skies from reaction.

Bunny vocation banny, you are just another billion air, but got you've a lot of money. So who's next up?

So we have the man who came to symbolize russian excess and money in the U. K.

A man who became the poster child in london, particularly in the nineteen and naught. IT is one time Chelsea roman, a ramage goodbyes billionaire, was produced by hanna hofford at Lewis Morris with additional production support from times and curry. James cook is the editor, and it's a BBC studios production for BBC world service.

For the BBC world service, the senior podcast producer is cat Collins and the podcast commissioning editor is john mano.

An adventure of a lifetime sAiling around the world, delivering a renovated yard thousands of miles around the globe, from brazil to europe. R A lot of experience.

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But for the sailors selected, this dream job quickly turned into a nightmare. The police are here. There's something on this boat. Wo but ten of k and a key suspect was miles away. Fox called shots.

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