Quote of the Day by Mukesh Ambani: ‘My big advantage was...’  

“My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation,” Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries. 

This entrepreneurial mindset has been passed down to the next generation, where Mukesh now encourages his own children and younger executives in ventures like Reliance Jio to overrule him to keep the company dynamic.

Who is Mukesh Ambani 

Mukesh Ambani is a prominent Indian billionaire businessman and the Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL). As of April 2026, he is recognised as the richest person in Asia and India, with a net worth estimated at approximately ₹9.8 lakh crore ($110-120 billion).     

Born in April 1957, he is the eldest son of the legendary industrialist Dhirubhai Ambani. He dropped out of an MBA programme at Stanford University in 1980 to return to India and assist his father in building the family business. 

Under his leadership, RIL has grown into India’s largest private-sector conglomerate, with interests spanning energy, petrochemicals, retail and telecommunications. 

He also owns the Mumbai Indians, one of the most successful franchises in the Indian Premier League (IPL). 

When was this quote said by Mukesh Ambani? 

Mukesh Ambani said this during an extensive profile interview with The New York Times published on June 15, 2008.

In the profile, titled "A Tycoon for the New India, Loyal to the Old," he reflected on how his father, Dhirubhai Ambani, gave him an extraordinary level of autonomy and financial backing early on

What does this quote mean? 

This quote means that Mukesh Ambani was given the freedom to build new businesses from scratch rather than just managing his father’s existing wealth. By treating him as a "first-generation" entrepreneur, Dhirubhai Ambani did not give his son a strict corporate blueprint or treat him like a trainee.

This unique trust allowed Mukesh Ambani to develop the raw problem-solving skills of a self-made founder, which ultimately gave him the confidence to scale the Reliance empire into entirely new industries like telecom and retail.