New Delhi: India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani mentioned Tuesday about leadership transition at his energy-to-retail conglomerate. Mukesh Ambani said he wants the process to be accelerated with seniors, including him, yielding to the younger generation. Ambani, 64, has previously not spoken about succession plans at the country’s most valuable company. However, he said Reliance is ‘now in the process of effecting a momentous leadership transition’.
Ambani has three children – twins Akash and Isha, and Anant.
Ambani was speaking at the ‘Reliance Family Day’. It markes the birth anniversary of the group’s founder Dhirubhai Ambani. He said Reliance Industries Ltd will become one of the strongest and most reputed Indian multinational companies in the world in the coming years. It will be propelled by forays into the clean and green energy sector as well as retail and telecom business reaching unprecedented heights.
“Achieving big dreams and impossible-looking goals is all about getting the right people and the right leadership. Reliance is now in the process of effecting a momentous leadership transition… From seniors belonging to my generation to the next generation of young leaders,” Ambani told the gathering. And this process, he would like ‘to be accelerated’.
The speech was reported by Ambani-owned news outlet ‘News18.Com’. The company however, did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comments on Ambani’s remarks about succession.
“All seniors – myself included – should now yield to the highly competent, extremely committed, and incredibly promising young leadership talent at Reliance,” Ambani said. “We should guide them, enable them, encourage them and empower them. And then sit back and applaud as they perform better than us,” Ambani added. He however, did not elaborate.
Reliance now has three verticals – energy business comprising of oil refineries at Jamnagar in Gujarat, petrochemicals plants and new energy factories, the retail business made up of physical stores and online e-commerce unit in JioMart, and telecom and digital business housed in Jio.
Ambani said an organisational culture must be built at Reliance that outlasts its leaders. “I have no doubt that Akash, Isha and Anant as the next-gen leaders will lead Reliance to even greater heights,” he said. In them, he saw ‘the same spark and potential’ that legendary industrialist and his father had ‘for making a difference to millions of lives and contributing to India’s growth’.
“Let us all wish them good luck in their mission to make Reliance ever more successful with even more transformative initiatives and achieving even greater accolades for our Reliance,” he said.
At the beginning of the speech, he also mentioned about the spouses of Isha (Anand Piramal) and Akash (Shloka). He also talked about Radhika, who is rumoured to be bride-to-be of Anant. He also mentioned about Prithvi, one-year-old son of Akash and Shloka.
Ambani said the time is now to ‘lay the foundation for Reliance’s future growth over the coming decades’ by seizing the humungous opportunity. He sounded cautious over not letting the guard down saying while normalcy is slowly returning after the pandemic it still is clouded by uncertainty over the spread of the new variants.