Mukesh Ambani Education

Mukesh Ambani Education

Mukesh Ambani is the son of Dhirubhai Ambani, The late founder of Reliance Industries. He is right now the chairman of Reliance Industries and India’s richest person according to Forbes 2010 (Estimated Net Worth US $ 29 Billion).

Mueskh Ambani was very studious student since childhood. According to him, he was free to choose any course after his graduation. And he chosen Chemical engineering.

I was the time around 70s and VIMAL was fairly popular textile brand at that time and obviously Reliance was one of the textile giant. So many people surprised that why he chose to be a chemical engineer rather than the textile engineering?

But Mukesh Ambani shocked his family by saying that he wanted to go to IIT. He also gave entrance test for IIT along with his other friends. He stood fifth or sixth while his friend Ajay Parekh who runs Pidilite topped Bombay University.

Since Inter-science results were announced after the IIT entrance, He joined IIT, Bombay. After the Inter-science results a few weeks later, He left and joined University Department of Chemical Technology (UDCT) along with my friends.

After that he and his friends applied to Harvard and Stanford University and he was luck to get the admission in world’s top 2-3 business colleges. And he chosen to join Stanford.

According to Mukesh Ambani,

Our class and faculty were outstanding. Nobel Laureate, Bill Sharpe was a professor of financial economics. He made a great impact on me. I hit it off with him on day one -- just as I did with Professor MM Sharma. These are the kinds of professors who make you think out of the box.

Prof MM Sharma's first lecture was on how you make money in the chemical business. Bill Sharpe started by asking 'how do you make a difference to the world.' It was my good fortune that I had a good set of professors and, of course, a great peer group.

While I was at Stanford, Reliance got a licence to make polyester. At that time (early '80s), the World Bank's Young Professional's Programme (YPP) was extremely prestigious. I was very keen to do it too. I had the choice of completing the Stanford graduate programme over the next six months, do the YPP for a year and then return to India. I planned to do this and return to work on the polyester plant.

However, when he came back to India, his father Dhirubhai Ambani was planning to start a polyester plant immediately and he couldn’t wait for the completion of his MBA and Mukesh wanted to work on this plant and that’s why he dropped out from Stanford University.