FAMILIES UNDER FIRE

The 56-hectare Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City on the outskirts of Bombay is one of the showcases of India's high-tech sector. There, some 8,000 employees of Reliance Group, the country's largest private conglomerate, operate 24-hour call centers, monitor the company's fiber-optic network on giant video screens, and update data services provided to mobile-phone subscribers. Many wouldn't associate the gleaming campus with Reliance, which blossomed under legendary founder Dhirubhai Ambani in old-world industries such as textile production and petrochemicals. But Knowledge City is evidence that a new generation of the Ambani family is reinventing India's most powerful business enterprise.



People will remember you after you are gone not for your money or your power, but because of what you have left behind.

—MUKESH AMBANI, Reliance Industries chairman

After Dhirubhai died in July 2002, his sons, Mukesh and Anil (estimated net worth for both: $2.8 billion), took control. They've been on an expansion tear ever since, successfully bolstering Reliance's presence in power generation, oil exploration, finance and biotech, and consolidating the company's position as a leading player in India's fast-growing telecom sector. Last year, with revenues of $16.8 billion, Reliance accounted for 3.5% of India's GDP. So confident are wealthier Indians in the future of the firm that one out of every four stock-owning citizens possesses shares in it.



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That's a large cheering section, especially considering the doubt that swirled around the conglomerate after Dhirubhai's death. Mukesh, now 46 and chairman of the group's flagship Reliance Industries, and Anil, its 44-year-old vice chairman, seemed so different from their father, a schoolteacher's son and self-made billionaire famed for his ability to work India's Byzantine bureaucracy to his advantage. Some questioned whether highborn Anil and Mukesh could fill their father's managerial shoes, even though Mukesh graduated from Stanford's business school and Anil from Wharton School. Others wondered whether the antipodean brothers could work together. The flashy Anil, who is married to a former film actress, likes designer clothes and jogs every morning, his chauffeur driving slowly behind. Mukesh is sedate and prefers spending time with his children or catching up on technical journals.

Right now, there is no sign of friction. Mukesh, Anil and their wives and children live under one roof with their mother, Kokilaben, called "Mummy" by Reliance employees. The Ambani boys appear to many to have absorbed some of their father's deft political touch, too. Last year, Reliance triggered a major row over its entrance into the mobile-phone market. A latecomer to the business, the Ambanis in 2002 acquired a license to sell basic fixed-line telephone services, which included the right to provide limited-range wireless services using souped-up cordless phones that enabled customers to roam around their own neighborhoods. But with a $2.7 billion investment in advanced network technology, Reliance began hawking mobile-phone services essentially as capable as those sold by existing cellular carriers—without having to pay the high fees required of government-sanctioned cellular operators. As Reliance began capturing market share (more than 6 million subscribers at recent count), a flood of complaints from rivals prompted regulators to rewrite telecom policy, allowing Reliance to continue in mobile telephony if it paid a $116 million penalty. To critics, this was a wrist slap. Columnist S. Gurumurthy charged that regulators were "condoning a deliberate, planned illegality. And it is happening because Reliance is in a position to control the levers of power." A Reliance spokesman counters, "When you're successful, your competitors will try to find alibis for your success."

Unfazed by criticism, Mukesh says he's determined to keep Reliance growing. His father demonstrated that Indian companies could be modern, vital and competitive. Now the sons have picked up the torch. "People will remember you after you are gone not for your money or your power," Mukesh says, "but because of what you have left behind."