Reliance's founder died without a will — and the brothers' feud destroyed half the empire

Dhirubhai Ambani founded Reliance as a textile manufacturer in 1966 and built it into India's largest private sector company by the early 2000s — a vertically integrated empire spanning petrochemicals, refining, textiles, telecoms, power, and financial services. After a stroke in 1986 he handed day-to-day operations to his sons Mukesh and Anil. When he died on 6 July 2002, he left no will. For a $23 billion conglomerate with dozens of businesses and no clear succession architecture, that gap was fatal.

The brothers ran Reliance jointly for two years, but tensions over control became unsustainable. In November 2004 Mukesh acknowledged differences with Anil over 'ownership issues.' The feud went public, hitting the share price. Their mother Kokilaben announced the split on 18 June 2005: Mukesh would keep the core petrochemicals business (RIL); Anil would take the newer ventures — telecom (RCom), power (Reliance Energy), and financial services (Reliance Capital). The division had no strategic logic; it was a mother's peace deal.

The outcomes diverged. Mukesh built RIL into India's most valuable company, launching Jio in 2016 to disrupt the very telecom market Anil's RCom dominated. Anil's group, once valued at $42B with Anil ranked the world's sixth richest person in 2008, unravelled. RCom had borrowed heavily for 3G spectrum (₹8,500 crore) and 4G upgrades (₹6,600 crore). When Jio launched with free calls and ultra-cheap data, RCom lost 20 million subscribers in two years. It filed for bankruptcy in 2019 with ₹47,000 crore in claims. Reliance Capital defaulted on ₹24,000 crore in bonds and entered insolvency in 2021.

Anil declared personal bankruptcy in a UK court in February 2020. In 2024 SEBI banned him from securities markets for five years and fined him ₹25 crore for fund diversion. Three state banks classified his companies' loans as fraud. The Supreme Court forced him to pay ₹550 crore to Ericsson to avoid jail. Mukesh's Jio later bought RCom's wireless assets for a fraction of their original value. The case is taught in business schools worldwide as the canonical warning against leaving family business succession to chance.