India's largest private sector company Reliance Industries Limited has appointed Isha Ambani and Akash Ambani, twin daughter and son of group chief Mukesh Ambani, as directors on the board of the group's telecom arm Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd and retail venture Reliance Retail Ltd, as per a press release.
This marks a formal induction of the next generation of Ambani family into the group's businesses.
Billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani has three children – Isha and Akash besides Anant, who is pursuing studies in the US.
Isha graduated from Yale University with double majors in psychology and South Asian studies in 2013 and worked with global consultancy firm McKinsey in US as a business analyst briefly.
On the other hand, Akash graduated from Brown University with major in economics and has been closely involved in the development of products and digital applications in the group's telecom venture, which is yet to launch services in the country.
Meanwhile, the board of Reliance Retail has also appointed Adil Zainulbhai as an independent director. Dipak Jain is already an independent director on the Board of Reliance Retail, the statement said. Zainulbhai, former chairman of McKinsey India, and Jain are also independent directors on the board of Reliance Jio Infocomm.
Reliance Jio bought 4G airwaves in 2010 in an auction by the government, but is yet to launch the services. The company is also the first telecom operator to hold a pan-India unified licence that authorises the company to provide all telecommunication services other than satellite telephony.
Reliance Jio is launching 4G services. The company recently signed a master services agreement for tower sharing with Indus Towers, which is the largest tower company in the world, is a joint venture company of Bharti Group, Aditya Birla Group and Vodafone Group. Previously, it inked pact with GTL Infra for more than 27,800 towers across India, and also with Viom Networks for its 42,000 towers.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)