Beyond three bodies, one soul

It was not only a father’s compliment; it was a chairman’s message to shareholders. Succession at Reliance, one of India’s most consequential companies, is no longer a future event. It is happening now.

No one should dismiss that lightly. Over the past two decades, Ambani has transformed Reliance from a company known largely for refining and petrochemicals into a sprawling conglomerate with interests in telecom, retail, digital services, media, energy, and now artificial intelligence (AI). Few business leaders anywhere have managed a reinvention on that scale. When Ambani speaks about the future of his company, investors pay attention because experience suggests he has earned that credibility.

The interesting question, therefore, is not whether the next generation is capable. Everything suggests they are. Nor is it whether Ambani has prepared them. He clearly has. Unlike many business families where succession remains vague until circumstances force a resolution, Reliance has spent years on the transition. Akash has become the public face of Jio and the group’s technology ambitions. Isha has taken charge of retail and consumer businesses. Anant is leading the new energy push. Their roles are visible and reasonably well-defined, their apprenticeship real rather than symbolic.

In that respect, Ambani has already done more than many founders. He knows, better than most, what the absence of such preparation costs. He lived through it. When Dhirubhai Ambani died in 2002 without a will or a succession plan, the consequence was one of the most damaging fraternal feuds in Indian corporate history — a prolonged public battle between two brothers that required their mother’s intervention to contain, erased billions in market value, and ended in the division of the company. The man now carefully choreographing his children’s future watched his own family’s past unspool without a script. That experience is not incidental to this story. It is the reason this story matters.

Yet one question remains. At the AGM, Ambani described the generational transfer of management as “almost complete”. Almost, however, is not complete. The gap between the two words is precisely where governance frameworks need to be built — not after the transition, but during it, while Ambani’s authority is intact, and his presence can give such a compact its weight and legitimacy. Right now, it is only Ambani’s personal authority that matters. That is an asset. But it is not a system. The strongest thing he can do, even as he continues to lead Reliance, is to ensure that the institution does not depend on his intervention alone to function.

Today, if there is a disagreement inside Reliance, who decides? The answer is obvious. Mukesh Ambani decides. He decides where capital goes, which business gets priority, how competing interests within the group are reconciled. He is the court of final appeal.

What happens tomorrow?

The businesses led by the three siblings are not separate islands. Jio, retail, and energy are deeply interconnected. The data generated by Jio’s over 500-million-subscriber telecom network has direct implications for Reliance Retail’s consumer intelligence. The AI infrastructure being built will sit across multiple businesses simultaneously. New energy projects will compete with consumer-facing digital expansion for the same balance sheet. Every major capital allocation decision will create trade-offs. Every large strategic choice will produce winners and losers within the organisation. As long as Ambani is actively involved, those questions have an answer. His authority settles them. The challenge is to ensure the answer doesn’t need his intervention all the time.

This is not a uniquely Indian problem. It is the central challenge faced by every large family-controlled enterprise — and the record is not encouraging.

At Samsung, the founder’s failure to document succession intentions led to an inheritance battle a generation later in which the chairman’s own brother called him “greedy” on national television, demanding billions in shares. The Murdochs spent years in boardrooms and courtrooms as four children contested control of the family trust, personal grudges overriding rational decision-making. At Lotte, another South Korean giant, the feud between two brothers was so vicious that the younger demoted his own father to wrest control from the elder; the family eventually faced criminal prosecution. The Guccis fought with such ferocity that the family lost the company altogether. The brand survived. The family did not.

The issue in each case was not affection. Families can be close and still disagree. Siblings can respect one another and still have different priorities — and differences grow more likely as businesses grow larger and more complex. The larger the enterprise, the greater the need for rules that everyone accepts before the disagreement arrives — because once it arrives, agreeing on rules becomes far harder.

Successful business families usually discover this early. The Walton family, which controls Walmart across three generations, exercises influence through institutions rather than personalities. Professional managers run the company. Independent directors play a meaningful role. The family governs itself through established structures. Closer home, Rahul Bajaj, after disputes with one of his own brothers, recognised that clear boundaries were preferable to future friction, formally separating the group’s businesses between his sons and building governance frameworks that could survive his personal authority. After his death, the group eliminated the chairman’s position, replacing it with a family council operating on consensus. The institution outlasted the patriarch because the patriarch built the institution.

That is precisely the task before Ambani now. He has prepared his children for leadership, assigned responsibilities, and given them visibility. The next task is different in kind: building a framework that does not depend on him alone. This means establishing, in writing, how disputes between the three verticals are resolved; what decisions require consensus and what decisions rest with individual authority; and how capital is allocated when Jio, retail, and energy compete for it.

These questions are easiest to answer when they appear unnecessary — when relationships are strong, trust is abundant, and the idea of disagreement seems remote. That is precisely when they must be answered.

Founders are remembered for the businesses they build. Sometimes their greatest contribution is the institution they leave behind — one capable of surviving them. That may be the stage Reliance has now reached.

“Three bodies, one soul” is a beautiful sentiment. Large enterprises, however, cannot be governed by sentiment alone. They require rules, processes, and structures that hold when circumstances change and the patriarch is no longer in the room.

Ambani has shown, repeatedly, that he builds for the long term. This is the long term.