Daily News & Analysis 

MUMBAI, March 7: At 9.55am on Monday, Anil Ambani formally announced his entry into the club of India’s top billionaires, signing in at No 4.
 
As he struck the gong from the podium of the Rotunda hall of the Bombay Stock Exchange, the newly listed share of Reliance Communications Ventures Ltd (RCoVL) — holding company of Reliance Infocomm — took off.
 
Starting at Rs299, it rose to Rs309 before settling at Rs290.85. At that price, the company is valued at over Rs35,000 crore, making Anil India’s fourth richest billionaire after steel baron Lakshmi Mittal (estimated wealth: Rs90,000 crore), Wipro chief Azim Premji (Rs61,290 crore), and elder brother Mukesh Ambani (Rs43,600 crore).
 
Anil is now worth Rs32,525 crore, this being the value of his personal holdings.
 
Even as the listing created instant wealth for  shareholders, missing at the celebrations was Mukesh, the man widely credited with the creation of Reliance Infocomm.
 
It was a power show all the same. While the home front was represented by Anil’s mother Kokilaben and wife Tina, the global face of the occasion was Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corp.
 
Ballmer — a classmate of Mukesh at Stanford  University — spoke from Seattle,  his image being streamed on to a giant BSE screen through the Reliance Infocomm network.
 
Anil’s instant success contrasted sharply with the challenges faced by his father, Dhirubhai. In the nine months since the Ambani empire was divided, two million Reliance shareholders have seen their paper wealth soar by more than Rs70,000 crore. That’s as much as the wealth Reliance Industries created over 28 years.