Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), has been ranked the fifth richest man in the world, just behind Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg. Forbes' 'Real Time Billionaires' list valued Mukesh's net worth at $75.9 billion after it saw a growth of 2.47% or roughly $2 billion in the recent past.
With this, Mukesh Ambani is now richer than American business tycoon Warren Buffet ($72.6 Billion) and Tesla Founder Elon Musk ($72.4 Billion).
Amazon chief Jeff Bezos continues to top the list with a net worth of $183.6 billion, followed by Microsoft Founder Bill Gates at $113.8 billion. Bernard Arnault & family, who own luxury goods company LVMH rank third in the list with a net worth of $112.1 billion.
The stock of RIL has been rising since March as investments have been flowing into its technology and telecom arm, Jio Platforms, from global marquee investors.
"In 2016, Reliance sparked a price war in India's hyper-competitive telecom market with the launch of 4G phone service Jio. Jio has signed on more than 340 million customers by offering free domestic voice calls, dirt-cheap data services and virtually free smartphones," Forbes said in its profile of Ambani.
On Wednesday, RIL, which is India's most valued company crossed the Rs 13 lakh crore market valuation mark.
The company's partly paid-up shares listed separately have a market capitalisation of Rs 46,702.88 crore. The aggregate market capitalisation of Reliance Industries now stands at Rs 13.17 lakh crore or USD 176.4 billion.
Jio Platforms has received a total investment of Rs 1,52,056 crore in the past three months from financial and strategic investors, with Google being the latest investor to pitch in with Rs 33,737 crore.
Others who have invested in Jio Platforms include Facebook, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Intel Capital and Qualcomm, among others.
On Wednesday, the company in a regulatory filing said that the meeting of its Board to consider and approve the standalone and consolidated financial results for the quarter that ended on June 30 will be held on Thursday, July 30, 2020 instead of July 24.
(With IANS and PTI inputs)