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Archana Chaudhary

WHETHER it is Mukesh Ambani's spanking new Maybach or Anil Ambani running the Mumbai Marathon, hardly a day passes without the average Mumbaikar reading something about the Ambanis, arguably the city's first surname in business.

Reliance Industries, the company that popularised the cult of the equity share in this commerce-fuelled city and beyond, thanks to its founder the late Dhirubhai Ambani, has become more than just a part of Mumbai's business life.

Reliance today straddles textiles, energy, oil exploration, oil refining, finance, biotech, communications and other services. Last year, with revenues of $16.8 billion, the behemoth accounted for 3.5 per cent of the country's GDP.

Earlier this year, the Time magazine featured the Ambanis among ``The Families that own Asia''.

If Dhirubhai was known for his well-attended annual general meetings sometimes held in football stadiums to hold the throngs, or realising outrageous dreams of mega projects and equally for controversies over how he `managed' India's political and social systems to build those; the younger Ambanis are known for their own mettle in creating new-age empires in telecom, broadband and energy. And on the social circuit, if the late magnate floored all with his earthy charm, the scions are regulars at fancy dos with famous friends in tow.

The last two years have seen Reliance grow further in spite of initial doubts surrounding the company after the founder's death.

It has reached out to retail markets in telecom and stepped into selling services through its Reliance Infocomm call centres or power distribution.

And that is the more dramatic aspect of change in the two years since the death of the Reliance patriarch in 2002. Controversies still abound though. Reliance created a storm when it sold its holding in engineering company L&T to the Birlas and many believe it got away with a relatively small penalty on entering the cellular market on a wireless telephony licence.

Rumours about the brothers parting ways still cause tremors in the stock market.But investors continue to believe in the company so much that one in four Indian shareholders holds Reliance shares.

What needs to be seen is how the company moves towards becoming a "Global Corporation" as Mr Mukesh Ambani's said in his first ever speech as chairman last year.

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