The richest man in Asia organized a three-day pre-wedding party for his son in the small city of Jamnagar in western India, which was attended by top businessmen from all over the world, heads of state, and Hollywood and Bollywood stars.
On Friday, the ceremony began four months before the wedding between Anant Ambani (28 years old) and his old girlfriend Radhika Merchant.
The guest list of approximately one thousand two hundred people includes Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, pop star Rihanna, Sunder Pecha, Ivanka Trump and the famous Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan.
The ceremony is being held in Jamnagar, a city of about six hundred thousand people in a semi-desert location in the state of Gujarat, the family’s birthplace and home to the main oil refinery of their Reliance Industries empire.
Radhika is the daughter of Encore Healthcare Pvt Ltd CEO Viren Merchant and entrepreneur Shaila Viren Merchant.
These celebrations are in keeping with the Ambani family tradition of lavish and extravagant parties while displaying the Indian billionaire’s economic and political influence.
Mukesh Ambani, 66, is currently the tenth richest man in the world with a net worth of $115 billion, according to Forbes. He is also the richest person in Asia. Reliance Industries is a huge conglomerate with annual revenues of more than one hundred billion dollars, and its activities range from petrochemicals, oil and gas, communications, and retail trade.
The Ambani family owns, among other assets, a 27-storey private residential building, called Antilla, worth $1 billion in Mumbai. It has three helipads, a 160-car garage, a private movie theater, a swimming pool and a fitness center.
Ambani’s critics say his company flourished mainly because of political connections in the 1970s and 1980s and then under Prime Minister Narendra Modi after 2014.
They say India’s “crony capitalism” has helped some companies, like Ambani’s, thrive.
Indian industrial tycoons do not tend to hand over the leadership of their institutions to their children quickly, but Mukesh Ambani (66 years old) has begun the process of handing over the leadership banner to his sons and daughters.
His eldest son Akash is now the chairman of Reliance Jio while his daughter Isha oversees retail activities, and he has pushed his younger son Anant into the new energy space.
In 2018, when his daughter got married, Ambani made headlines for the grand celebrations, with pop star Beyoncé performing at the pre-wedding festivities. At that time, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were among the guests, along with Indian celebrities and Bollywood stars, in the western Indian city of Udaipur.
Later that year, the happy couple, Isha Ambani and Anand Piramal, officially celebrated their engagement on picturesque Lake Como in Italy. In December 2018, they got married at Ambani’s residence in Mumbai.
The three-day pre-wedding party offers a glimpse of the extravagance expected at a July wedding. The Ambani family is celebrating this in the family’s hometown of Jamnagar, where it also owns the company’s main oil refinery.
Guests will dress up in costumes from the famous movie “Jungle Fever” as they visit the animal rescue center run by Anant Ambani.
The invitation text for the party said that guests will find an “inspiration board” explaining the dress code for each of the three days of the party, with an army of hair stylists, makeup artists and Indian wear designers available at the hotel where they are staying.
There will also be traditional Hindu ceremonies in the temple complex. Guests, many arriving on chartered planes, will be served 500 dishes prepared by about 100 chefs.
