Real Reason Why Mukesh Ambani Is Among TIME’s 100 Most Influential People

Mukesh Ambani is one of the business titans in TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world, a feat which does not come as a surprise at all. However, it is not for his sprawling estates or his $54 billion worth, or him being Asia’s richest man, but for the telecom disruption he brought with Jio and the stellar possibilities that he could leverage with Jio’s reach and penetration that he features in the list.

Mukesh Ambani’s TIME portrayal talks about how his retail division and Jio will fructify when both of them are combined. “What is truly jaw-dropping is the way Jio will allow Reliance to potentially dominate a staggering array of new businesses. When its enormous retail division is married to the Jio network for e-commerce, it will give Amazon a run for its money,” industrialist Anand Mahindra of Mahindra & Mahindra group wrote in his profile for Mukesh Ambani.

Mukesh Ambani’s plans for e-commerce are already taking shape. Reliance has already started withdrawing its products from major e-commerce sites, reportedly. “Whatever inventory is still available, is only there until it runs out since Reliance isn’t taking any new orders either,” Business Insider said. Also, Reliance is testing business models for e-commerce in Gujarat.

With a stronghold of 28 crore users, Mukesh Ambani has taken over the biggest of the telecom operators — Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel — if not in terms of numbers, then in terms of the speed with which Jio is growing its subscriber base, per a recent report by TRAI, titled Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicator Report. Reliance Jio mopped up an additional 2.8 crore subscribers in the Oct-Dec quarter.

Previously, Mukesh Ambani also featured in the prestigious Forbes list of billionaires, climbing six spots from 19th to become the 13th richest man on the earth. He shared this achievement with Amazon fame Jeff Bezos and Microsoft’s Bill Gates who continue to be on the top two spots, followed by Warren Buffet. Facebook Mark Zuckerberg was the 8th in the list. The list was released in March 2019.―Financial Express