A “golden moment” enlightened industrialist Anil Ambani on the path he should take to extricate himself from the massive Rs 43,000-crore debt weighing Reliance Communications (RCom) down. That moment came one Sunday when his 83-year-old mother, Kokilaben Ambani, caught him in a pensive mood and told him “to ensure no lender loses a single rupee”.

Anil then took the decision to exit the bleeding wireless telecom business. “When your mother’s blessings are with you, you don’t require anything else,” Anil, Reliance Group chairman, told TOI in an exclusive interview.

And on December 28, the birth anniversary of the late Dhirubhai Ambani , RCom signed a deal with elder brother Mukesh Ambani’s

Reliance Jio to sell four wireless infrastructure assets for Rs 23,000 crore. Anil will also monetise RCom’s other properties, including real estate, to bring down the total debt to a manageable Rs 6,000 crore. In his last concluding meeting with lenders, Anil told them that he was practising “moral financing”. “I owe this money to you morally, rather than legally.”

RCom’s woes started with the 2G scam and later by the Jio “tsunami”. The company’s number of subscribers dwindled from 120 million in December 2016 to 14 million. “In that period, we had growth, and with growth came challenges. The industry is well known for corporate rivalry. The strong became stronger, the weak became weaker. We then had the 2G scam. And now we have a judgment which says there was no scam! Thank you, God. Those were extremely challenging and difficult times — for the company, for the group, for individuals, and for my colleagues, who for no fault of theirs were arrested and put behind bars. And then you come out super-clean.”

The 2G case also took a personal toll as he was subjected to CBI questionings and court hearings. “I never had the privilege of meeting CBI officials or visiting the CBI office. But I was there for eight hours. I was interrogated by the CBI. I was unaware what an encounter is. I thought an encounter is what we see in movies. But here I was, just sitting in their office and suddenly the CBI people come in and they bring in (A) Raja (to see the reaction). And I said to him, ‘hello, sir’. Because I had always met him as the minister for telecommunications. I went through that experience of torture, trauma, mental agony, mental stress— these are life-changing experiences. They are not for the ordinary. You have to be tempered like steel,” he said.

“Strangely, you then become a witness for the prosecution, that is the CBI. You go to the CBI court. My wife Tina was also dragged in. But the charmer that she is, Tina answered all questions, and very graciously invited the judge to visit our Kokilaben Ambani hospital, which she leads. (Laughs) I would get calls from people saying you are going to get arrested tomorrow, or you are going to go to jail. But my conscience was clear. We had to go through public scrutiny,” he said. “The things I went through in my life, I never want to go through again. And no one else should undergo the same suffering. Today, I have a better appreciation of life.”

When asked about what was going through his mind when he decided to quit the wireless telecom — one of the few businesses he inherited after a 2005 settlement between him and Mukesh, he said, “Business is not about emotion. Business is about economics. And business is about what is best for all stakeholders.”

Biz will remain in family

Life has come full circle for the Ambanis with the deal, which is akin to retaining the heirloom within the family. Despite all the talk, Anil said that his relationship with his brother is of “great personal respect and super cordial”.

The Ambanis forayed into the mobile services business in the early nineties after Anil went to his father and apprised him about the market potential. At that time, a cellphone would cost around Rs 30,000. The metro circles were already awarded, so the family bid for the C-category circles and bagged them. “It was early 2000 when the next auction came up and we created a plan to participate in it, but our plan was shot down by my father,” Anil reminisced. Dhirubhai told his sons to bring down the cost of making a phone call so that it becomes cheaper than sending a postcard. His vision paid off. And the rest is history. But, a few years after Dhirubhai passed away in 2002, two Reliance groups were created.

Deals that weren’t sealed for the good

Anil wanted to grow his telecom business fast and expand beyond India. But as it turned out, most of the transactions he was close to sealing did not work out. When he wanted to acquire MTN of South Africa , it ran into a legal hurdle. For another reason, a deal with Zain Telecom didn’t make it to the Reliance Group’s fold. But today, he has no regrets.

“As part of our growth strategy, we pursued a number of opportunities. I went to Kuwait and met the controlling shareholders of Zain Telecom, the Kharafi family, and we agreed on a $6-billion deal to buy Zain Telecom. Shortly after, I get a call from the Kharafis that they have a competing offer and if I matched it, the deal would be mine. I was wondering why a competing offer? Mr Mittal (Sunil) made an offer of $11 billion, significantly higher than our bid. I have great personal admiration for Sunil, and consider him, in the words of my father, to be a worthy member of the zero-to-hero club. Yet, in a recent interview, Mr Mittal has conceded that, in hindsight, that acquisition was perhaps one of his biggest regrets,” said Anil.

Then there was an opportunity for RCom to partake in the Hutchison’s local mobile services business when its partner, the Ruias of Essar, decided to sell — but that deal too didn’t materialise. “I went to Hong Kong and met the legendary Li Ka-shing and the very brilliant mind, Canning Fok, who agreed for an $11-billion deal. We shook hands at a lunch at Li Kashing’s penthouse and all was done. We also got the financing. Then I get a call from Canning— the Ruias were not agreeable. They wanted to run a bidding process. So there was Reliance, Vodafone and Hindujas. Vodafone’s bid led by Arun Sarin was at $21 billion. It was a deal worth losing. Just think about having more than $15 billion of debt on our balance sheet. God is very kind,” he said.

By 2014, Jio had already announced launching its mobile services. “For two years prior to the Jio launch, we had two options — ya toh bech do, yaa kisi ko khareed lo; either be consolidated or be the consolidator. We initially said we will be the consolidators. So, we announced deals with SSTL ( Sistema Shyam Teleservices), Aircel and Brookfield. We also did a spectrumsharing and trading deal with Jio. We were fairly clear about the industry structure — that things are going to change and it will no longer be a 10-12 player market, it’ll be a five player market. But it’s a big enough market — 1.2 billion people. Then came the Jio tsunami. The entire industry was impacted. It was a full-blown crisis for the telecom sector. The RBI issued a note of caution that no banks should lend to telecoms in India. And if Indian banks didn’t lend, you could forget about lending by foreign banks,” said Anil, during the conversation which was sprinkled with anecdotes from personal learnings and his father’s teachings.

But with the group under a cloud, Anil continued to face roadblocks. “With banks... when one company in a group has problems with them, the entire group comes under a cloud. From the banks’ perspective, it is right. From our perspective, we would look at it and say, ‘look these are separate companies and you need to treat them that way’. The banks were unrelenting, and I supported the banks. 2017 clearly showed me who my friends were. Also, it taught me many lessons on relationships, trust and respect. There were many corporate chameleons,” said Anil, his voice breaking with emotion.

“Whether you are a billionaire or a common man, whether there is wealth or no wealth, you take nothing when you leave this world. You have come empty-handed, and are going to leave emptyhanded. My father would tell me, ‘Anil, money is a very funny commodity.’ When you have money, more money comes. And when you have no money, no money comes.”

Future upbeat

Since Anil’s announcement of a resolution to pay off lenders, RCom’s scrip has risen significantly. From its December 22, 2017 close at Rs 16 on BSE, the stock nearly doubled to about Rs 31 on Wednesday (January 3, 2018). Reliance Group has a market cap of around Rs 81,300 crore, which is a little more than its combined income of about Rs 80,000 crore (includes only listed companies). The new RCom will focus on B2Bs. The group is also betting on its other businesses like financial services and defence to drive growth in the future.

‘Picture abhi baaki hai’

In hindsight, does Anil feel he got a raw deal from the family settlement? Is there anything he would want to undo or rewrite? He responds in the negative. “I did exactly as my mother wanted (on the family settlement). Nothing else prevails. If my mother would have told me to walk out with whatever clothes I was wearing, I would have touched her feet and done exactly that,” he said. “Please remember that my father was a petrol pump operator when he started his career and came with Rs 500 from Yemen, Aden,” he said.

But not many can survive trying times. Where does he draw his strength from? “My parents, my fitness regimen have been the biggest sources of my ability to focus, execute, meditate and dream with my eyes open,” said the marathoner. “As they would say in Bollywood , for me, the journey has just begun. Picture tho abhi baki hai, mere dost!”

The hard phase though has not claimed Anil’s sense of humour. At 58, he takes inspiration from the fact that Warren Buffett and Rupert Murdoch made a majority of their wealth after the age of 60. “I will be turning 60 soon. So, there’s great hope (laughs).”

After the media conference where he announced the decision to settle RCom’s lenders, Anil received a call from a friend who, on a lighter note, suggested he take royalty from actor Salman Khan. Why, asked Anil? “Tiger abhi zinda hai!”

