Anil Ambani

Anil Ambani met his future wife, yesteryear's Bollywood actress Tina Munim, while attending a Gujarati wedding in the 1980s. They met again within a few months while both of them were in Philadelphia, but when he asked her out she declined as she was in a relationship with much older Bollywood superstar Rajesh Khanna.

In 1986, while nursing a broken heart after being separated from Rajesh Khanna, Tina learned about Anil's interest in her via a relative. While initially reluctant to get into another relationship, she later agreed to go on a date and the two became emotionally involved soon after.

Despite the fact that she was also a Gujarati like them, Anil's family was against the union due to her previous involvement. This caused them to part ways for years till he once again contacted her after his parents, realizing his genuine love for the actress, gave consent to their marriage.

Anil Ambani was born on June 4, 1959 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India to Dhirajlal Hirachand "Dhirubhai" Ambani, the founding father of Reliance Industries, and his wife Kokilaben Ambani. He is the younger brother of Mukesh Ambani, who later became the head of Reliance Industries Limited, and has two sisters, Nina Kothari and Deepti Salgaonkar.

His father settled in Mumbai following his return from Yemen and started his import-export business in a small 350 sq. ft. room in partnership with his cousin Champaklal Damani. He and his partner went their separate ways in 1965 and he founded Reliance Industries in 1966.

Anil grew up in a typical middle-class Indian family and lived in a two-bedroom apartment at the Jai Hind Estate in Bhuleshwar, Mumbai, in the early 1970s. The family lived in a six-storeyed apartment at Usha Kiran for some time and later his father purchased a 14-floor apartment in Colaba, where the two brothers lived for a long time.

In 1975, he enrolled into Kishinchand Chellaram College under University of Mumbai, from where he earned his bachelor's degree in Science. He later went to the USA to pursue his master's degree in Business Administration at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Anil Ambani joined his father's conglomerate company, Reliance Industries, as the Co-Chief Executive Officer in 1983. In this position, he has been credited with pioneering many innovations in the Indian capital market.

He also led India's first foray into overseas capital markets with international public offerings of global depositary receipts, convertibles and bonds. Since 1991, the company, under his leadership, has managed to raise around US$2 billion from overseas financial markets.

The high point in his overseas endeavours came in 1997 when he launched a 100-year $100 million Yankee bond at a rate of 10-25 per cent per annum in the US market. Following in his father's footsteps, who had made issuing of such bonds fashionable, his attempts made the company the first in India, and the country the second in Asia, to issue these bonds.

Since 1986, after their father suffered a stroke, the two brothers successfully took the company to new heights, making it one of India's leading textiles, petroleum, petrochemicals, power and telecommunication company.

After Dhirubhai Ambani died of a major stroke on July 6, 2002, the two brothers started to have differences over 'ownership issues'.

Anil Ambani's Reliance Group has a market capitalization of US$14 billion and net assets of US$28 billion. Operating in over 20,000 towns and 450,000 villages in India and abroad, the company touches the life of 1 in 10 Indians every single day.