NEW YORK (Bloomberg) – Mukesh Ambani overtook Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma to become Asia’s richest person as he positions Reliance Industries to disrupt the e-commerce space in India.
The chairman of India’s refining-to-telecoms conglomerate, Ambani was estimated to be worth US$44.3 billion (S$60.5 billion) on Friday with Reliance Industries rising 1.6 per cent to a record 1,099.8 rupees, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Ma’s wealth stood at US$44 billion at the close of trading on Friday in the US, where the company is listed.
Ambani has added US$4 billion to his fortune this year as Reliance doubled its petrochemicals capacity and investors cheered the success of his disruptive telecom upstart Reliance Jio Infocomm. Then earlier this month, the tycoon unveiled plans to leverage his 215 million telecom subscribers to expand his e-commerce offerings, taking on the likes of Amazon.com and Walmart. Alibaba Group Holding’s Ma has lost US$1.4 billion in 2018.
