India has been talking a lot about Mukesh Ambani, who is Asia's richest man, for the past few months.
Not because he made a big purchase or gave a lot of money to charity, but because of his son's huge wedding parties, the whole country and the world are in awe.
From March on, the pre-wedding parties have put the Ambani family at the center of many breakfast, lunch, and dinner talks.
The youngest son of Mukesh Ambani, Anant Ambani, got married to his longtime girlfriend Radhika Merchant on Friday at a family-owned convention center in Mumbai. The wedding was the conclusion of celebrations that took place all over the world for six months.
Indian weddings can be very expensive, but the sheer size and scope of the Ambani party may have surpassed the party spirit of the former royals.
The paparazzi have never run out of things to write about. Bollywood stars who are always at the parties, global pop stars like Rihanna and Justin Bieber who perform for millions of dollars, and a lot of VVIP leaders who show up to the parties have given them plenty of material.
Take a look at the famous people who attended: Mark Zuckerburg, CEO of Meta; Han-Jong Hee, CEO of Samsung; Bill Gates; Ivanka Trump, daughter of former US President Donald Trump; Boris Johnson, former UK prime minister; Sir Tony Blair, former UK prime minister; and the Kardashian sisters.
The list goes on.
"These people have a lot to do." The BBC talked to James Crabtree, author of The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age. "They aren't just coming to have fun."
"What this tells you is that global business leaders believe the Ambanis are strategically important and also that they see India as a very big market."
Get to know the family
People often say that the Ambanis are India's most famous business family.
They are in charge of Reliance Industries, an oil-to-telecoms conglomerate that was started by Mukesh Ambani's father, Dhirubhai Ambani. Dhirubhai Ambani had a controversial past and became famous for skillfully navigating India's controversial political climate before liberalization while making huge amounts of money for his company's shareholders.
When Dhirubhai died in 2002, the kingdom he built was split between his two sons, Anil and Mukesh, after what was probably one of the worst battles for power in Indian history.
Since then, the brothers' fortunes have changed. The younger Anil filed for bankruptcy, while Mukesh has been shifting his focus more and more to consumer-facing businesses while still being the leader in petrochemicals, which is Reliance's main business.
His oil plant in Jamnagar, a town in western India, is the biggest in the world.
Some of the most famous luxury names in the world, like Valentino, Versace, Burberry, and Bottega, have come to India in the last few years thanks to Reliance.
The company owns a team in the richest cricket event in the world and the famous British toy store Hamleys, among other things.
It paid £57 million for the famous country club Stoke Park in Buckinghamshire in 2021.
Reliance signed a legally binding agreement earlier this year to merge its entertainment platforms with Disney. This is the latest move by the company to change its industrial roots. With the rights to cricket tournaments and foreign shows, Mukesh Ambani is now a strong player in the video streaming market.
Many big companies, like Google and Meta, gave the conglomerate billions of dollars to spend during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the start of its shopping spree. The goal with Meta was to link the more than 400 million Indian WhatsApp users to JioMart, an online shopping store.
Foreign companies like Netflix and Amazon are having a hard time competing with the company's aggressive pricing approach.
In private, foreign companies that compete with Reliance in the same areas sometimes say that the playing field isn't fair because the Ambanis are one of the few families that have benefited from the Indian government's strategy of giving big contracts to Indian businessmen.
Mr. Crabtree says, "Foreign players have to make a tough choice." "They can fight Reliance or sleep with Reliance." Amazon has chosen to fight, but Zuckerburg has chosen to work with them. But these fights usually cost a lot, and the outsiders lose.
Now, Mukesh Ambani is focusing on financial services. Reliance has teamed up with BlackRock in the US to start a brokering and fund management business.
So it's no surprise that this is more than just a wedding for the Ambanis.
As a sign of their strength and power, says brand strategy expert Harish Bijoor, they do this. "This story shows that this family is a magnet that pulls in people from business, politics, and show business."
He also says that the media frenzy is a way for them to make a personal event "even more personal to the whole world," like Reliance customers who would not have been invited.
Dhirubhai, the founder of the Ambani family, is known for bringing small investors in India to the stock market. His son Mukesh, on the other hand, is known for making it easy for his businesses to connect with the average Indian customer in many ways.
The Ambani stable makes a lot of the things that Indians buy and watch, as well as the clothes they wear and maybe even the way they will do business in the future.
For this reason, a fancy wedding was the perfect time for the family to promote their brand to India's growing middle class.
Yes, the wedding has really caught the attention of people in India and around the world.
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