‘Global gamechanger’ Mukesh Ambani adds $7 billion wealth in just 5 months

NEW DELHI: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani, 60, whose conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL) toppled Tata Group’s TCS to become the most valued stock on BSE this April, has seen his wealth swell by over $7 billion so far this calendar.

This was the biggest rise in wealth among Ambani’s Indian peers, thanks to a surge in the shares of Reliance Industries on healthy growth in core business quarter after quarter and a good response to his telecom venture Reliance Jio, whose subscriber base touched 10.9 crore at the end of FY17.

On Wednesday, Ambani was named in the Forbes’ second annual list of Global Game Changers that included 25 ‘intrepid business leaders’ who are ‘unsatisfied with status quo’ and are “transforming their industries and changing the lives of billions of people around the globe.”

None other Indian made it to the list.

Mukesh Ambani’s wealth has risen to $29.9 billion as of May 17, 2017, up $7.10 billion from what it was on December 31, as per data available on the Bloomberg website.

“The oil and gas tycoon entered the country’s telecom market with a bang, offering fast internet at dirt cheap prices and gained 100 million customers in six months, setting off a wave of consolidation in the telecom sector,” Forbes said of Ambani’s Jio venture.

Ambani comes at the top of the list for his gamechanging efforts to bring internet to the Indian masses.

As per the Bloomberg Billionaire index of world’s richest personalities, industrialists Uday Kotak, Kumar Mangalam Birla and Gautam Adani, Wipro’s Azim Premji and Sun Pharma’s Dilip Sanghvi were among the Indian billionaires who have seen their personal wealth rise by at least $1 billion so far this calendar.