Many moons ago during an Investor meeting, Mukesh Ambani signalled his two top favourite businesses within the Reliance Group – Telecom & Retail. He suggested that these two were the future of India and that the two industry verticals are so critical to the company’s future growth. He was right, after all. The Indian Retail Industry is estimated at USD 800 Bn with just a tenth of it being organised and run by mid- to large players. With a population of 130 crores, Indians use over 115 crore mobile connections, with many in urban areas holding two or more connections, for voice, data, tablet devices, etc. individually.
On Tue. 28 Jun. ’22, the company announced that Mukesh Ambani’s eldest (twin) son Akash Ambani as the Chairman of Reliance Telecom. Today, 29 Aug. ’22, Mr. Mukesh Ambani introduced Ms. Isha Ambani as the Leader of the company’s Retail business.
Though telecom was a fresh start in the Mukesh Ambani camp (his younger brother Anil Ambani used to run the older telecom business since 2002), retail was a complete virgin territory to the group which boasts USD 217 Bn in revenues within the empire. But for these two, most other businesses run by the Group are B2B in nature & style. In 2006, Reliance Retail launched it’s first store – Reliance Fresh Grocery format at Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) and currently operates 12,000+ outlets pan-India. The company operates every retail format possible in consumer retail – from FMCG to fashion apparel, franchises of international labels to Indian fashion designers, electronic, footwear, among others.
Isha Ambani (30), 35 years younger to her father has played a pivotal role in the creation, transformation and the success of Reliance Retail. Ever since she and her twin brother started actively participating in their respective businesses, the verticals have seen tremendous growth. Isha is a graduate from Yale University, USA and has worked with top consulting firm, McKinsey & Co. She also pioneered and launched the company’s e-comm venture AJIO in 2016 and is now working on a super-app which will combine all the business verticals run by the Retail giant. The company has an estimated turnover of Rs. 157,629 Cr. for FY 21, of which 40% revenues come from fuel retailing, 20% from Electronics Retail, 25% from Grocery retail and the rest from all other formats which the company runs across the country. Anant Ambani is a graduate from Brown University, USA and has worked closely with his father in creating the telecom behemoth that is Jio.
The advantage both of them bring to the table are that they are closest (by age) to the current spending generation – the millennials and have crafted products and services which cater to them, especially. For Ex. Akash acquired Save music app and made its services free to Jio users, when online streaming audio apps were far and few, but he knew that this is where the interest of the future generation lies. Isha, on the other hand has created excellent retail formats, sharply targeted at the younger generation, be it in electronics or fast fashion.
Isha Ambani’s elevation to the top position is a waking-up call to businesses run by many other Industrialists and Entrepreneur, no matter how small or big they are in size. The trust that the parents have kept on their children in the Reliance family is quite laudable. Younger son Anant Ambani has been working closely with his mother Nita Ambani who runs the IPL Team from Mumbai. It is to be seen how and what role he will play, in shaping the upcoming sporting businesses in the country.
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