Mukesh Ambani, the Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), who is also Asia’s richest man, seems to be grooming his youngest son Anant Ambani for a much bigger role within the group.

Anant,who didn’t hold any formal position in the Reliance empire till fiscal year ended March 2019, now figures in the management team of five verticals.

The 25-year-old has been inducted on the board of Reliance Retail Ventures, and he is part of the team headed by Executive Director Subramaniam V. Anant’s siblings — twins Akash and Isha — are also on the board of this company, according to RIL’s annual report for financial year 2019-20.

Anant is also on the board of Digital Services, the vertical which holds all the digital interests of the group, including broadband connectivity and the online-to- offline (O2O) commerce platform, JioMart.

The youngest Ambani, who had worked at RIL’s Jamnagar plant earlier, now holds an important position in refining and marketing, and petrochemicals verticals, according to the annual report. On March 16, 2020, Anant was appointed director on Jio Platforms board, sources close to the development had told BusinessLine in May.

With new roles and responsibilities, Anant is being groomed for a bigger role in the group, the sources said.

He, however, is not a part of the the management of oil and gas exploration & production, and liquidity and capital resources verticals.

Anant did his schooling at Dhirubhai Ambani International School in Mumbai. He graduated from Brown University in Rhode Island.

Anant’s siblings Akash and Isha had joined the boards of Reliance Jio Infocomm and Reliance Retail Ventures earlier in 2014. They had joined the group at about the same age as their father. Mukesh Ambaniwas 24 when he joined RIL in 1981.

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