Carrying on the legacy: Mukesh before his late father's portrait

If Mukesh is the Chairman of RIL today, it's thanks to the blessings of late Dhirubhai. He was the implementer of his father's vision

Few doubt Mukesh Ambani's role at the Rs 100,000 crore Reliance group as the chief strategist, the visionary who paints the big picture, and then goes about meticulously executing it piece by piece. The 47-year-old portly Chairman & Managing Director of Reliance Industries may not cut an impressive picture in the flesh, but don't mistake his understatedness for lack for passion. Or ambition. "I want to find a place for myself in India, and then I want to find a place for India in the world," he is supposed to have said at one public forum. Recently, he told BT that he was now targeting doubling the group's revenues to close to Rs 2 lakh crore in the next five years.

The most obvious manifestation of the Mukesh brand of ambition and vision is the rollout of Reliance Infocomm's wireless service, which is now being used by close to 10 million Indians. And he plans to rope in another 30-40 million subscribers over the next two-three years, once he rolls out the company's broadband services.

Infocomm may be the closest to the Chairman's heart, but sources within RIL maintain that for the past couple of years, when it comes to the management's initiatives, it's been Mukesh all the way-right from the merger of Reliance Petroleum into RIL, the acquisitions of IPCL, Flag Telecom and Trevira, the gas discoveries and the foray into life sciences and clinical research.

If Mukesh is the Chairman of RIL today, it's of course thanks to the blessings of his late father. And if Dhirubhai harboured any doubts about the capabilities of his elder son, they must have quickly disappeared once Reliance's 27 million tonnes per annum grassroots refinery came up at Jamnagar in just 36 months. At that time Mukesh was more the implementer of his father's vision, more the technocrat than the strategist. If he's been able to combine the two now, it's largely thanks to the degree in chemical engineering he pocketed from Bombay Univertisty, and the MBA from Stanford University. Add the subsequent apprenticeship under the eagle eye of his father at the petrochemicals operations-where he picked up the virtues of integration, synergy and economies of scale-and the education is complete.

It's pretty evident that Mukesh is very different from his brother: Thoughtful rather than instinctive, practical than emotional, and content to maintain a low profile rather than being featured on Page One or Three. He isn't much of a socialiser, and is seen at most public functions either in the company of wife Nita, or cousins Hital and Nikhil Meswani, or other close family and business associates. Sources at Reliance point out that Mukesh is surrounded by three-four key executives, who have been advising the Chairman for the past couple of years, be it matters relating to business or family. "He doesn't take instant decisions, but relies quite a lot on feedback from those around him to make those decisions," says one source close to the family. Wife Nita too is said to be a major influence in the decision-making of the Chairman of the Rs 1 lakh crore megacorp.