Mukesh Ambani reveals his riskiest venture, says he bet everything on…

Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, has launched businesses that have transformed entire sectors and arguably the entire Indian economy, but perhaps none more impactful than Reliance Jio– the country’s largest telecom provider which completely overhauled India’s telecom market by essentially launching the digital revolution that has helped internet and digital services to reach the remotest corners of the country.

But Jio was more than another business venture for Mukesh Ambani as the Reliance Industries Chairman had bet everything on the success of his telecom service, which aimed to revolutionize India’s telecom sector and leave a positive impact on common Indians, helping ease their lives by providing cheap mobile internet and free phone calls to any network within the country.

Mukesh Ambani reveals riskiest venture

In an interview with McKinsey’s Gautam Kumra, Mukesh Ambani described Reliance Jio as his riskiest venture as he invested a whopping $25 billion into the project, most of which was his own money.

“We’ve always taken big risks because, for us, scale is important. The biggest risk we have taken so far was Jio. At the time, it was our own money that we were investing, and I was the majority shareholder. Our worst-case scenario was that it might not work out financially because some analysts thought India wasn’t ready for the most advanced digital technology,” Ambani revealed.

The business tycoon said he had told the board that its okay if the returns aren’t substantial because it was his own money. “I told them that as Reliance, this will be the best philanthropy that we will have ever done in India because we will have digitized India, and thereby completely transformed India.”

However, the Mukesh Ambani’s gambit paid off in a big way as Reliance Jio not only emerged as India’s largest telecom provider, but transformed the country’s entire digital space with its affordable internet prices and pocket-friendly tariff plans, that essentially triggered a price war in the telecom sector, and forced other players to adapt or perish.

Currently, Reliance Jio has an estimated market cap of nearly five times the initial investment made by Mukesh Ambani.

How Mukesh Ambani’s Jio gambit paid off?

Notably, before Mukesh Ambani launched Jio, the Indian telecom market had nearly a dozen telecom providers, with Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti Airtel– Jio’s main competitor– owning a 25 percent market share, and the smallest five providers accounting for about 21 percent.

However, within a short span after its launch, Reliance Jio, owning to its competitive pricing, forced out most of smaller competitors, leaving just three main players in the telecom market.

Mukesh Ambani credits the idea behind Jio to a business advice his legendary father Dhirubhai Ambani once gave him. “My father used to say that if you want to start a business to be a billionaire, you are an idiot; you will never get there. If you want to start a business to impact a billion people, then you have a good chance of success, and, as a by- product, you can make a reasonable amount of money,” Ambani revealed.

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