Family, politics & usual 'gup-shup': What Mukesh Ambani & Harsh Goenka discuss on a video-call

NEW DELHI: Two days after Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) announced it became a net-debt free company months ahead of its March 2021 target, Harsh Goenka got on a video-call with Mukesh Ambani on Sunday to discuss the brilliance of India's richest man.
The RPG Enterprise Chairman took to Twitter to share a screenshot of the two business tycoons talking on a Zoom video-call during the weekend.

The 62-year-old businessman lauded the RIL Chairman for making India’s biggest company net-debt free amidst the global slowdown and the Covid-19 impact on the country's economy. He also praised Ambani for understanding the future of tech and pivoting his 'core business from falling oil & petrochemicals to rising tech'. He further said that this is a feat only one man could achieve, when he got the largest global investors to give their money.



The picture of the duo sparked a lot of excitement and discussion on the micro-blogging site amongst Goenka's 1.5 million Twitter followers. The RPG boss tried his best to answer the curious fans, and give an insight into what happened during the call.

Most followers wanted to know what the two billionaires discussed during the video call. Goenka promptly responded, "the same as every one else - family, economy, politics, Jio network connectivity & usual gup-shup (Hindi term for chit-chat).


When a user asked him to share the video of the full conversation with Ambani, Goenka replied, "That’s private, sir."

In another tweet, Goenka said that India will lead the tech pack, thanks to the growth of Reliance Jio. He asked American and Chinese companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent to move over as Jio will be soon making a big bang entry.


Last week, Subrahmanyam KVJ, Director of Capgemini Invent, praised Reliance's 3-step plan for raise over $22 billion in approximately 10 weeks, and making the parent company debt-free. RIL has raised over Rs 1.68 lakh crore in just 58 days. Its net-debt stood at Rs 1.61 lakh crore as on March 31, 2020.


The post was later retweeted by Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

RIL became the first Indian company to enter the exclusive club of $150 billion in market capitalisation among the world's most valuable companies, and is now ranked 58 on the list. It now has a market capitalisation of $151.2 billion and this is the highest ever valuation of an Indian company.

In the exclusive club of $150 billion m-cap companies, RIL is now ahead of global leaders like Vanguard, Unilever, China Mobile, McDonalds, AstraZeneca, T Mobile, Amgen, Costco, Bank of China, Sanofi, Accenture, Royal Dutch Shell, Bristol Myer Squibb, Philip Morris, BHP group, Texas Instruments, Invesco, American Tower, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and IBM, among others.

The list of the world's most valuable companies is topped by Saudi Aramco with a market capitalisation of $1.7 trillion, followed by Apple at $1.5 trillion, Microsoft at $1.4 trillion and Amazon at $1.3 trillion. These four companies are in the trillion dollar club. They are followed in the top 10 by Alphabet, Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent, Berkshire Hathway and Johnson & Johnson.

Last week, in a statement on Friday, Ambani said, "I have fulfilled my promise to the shareholders by making Reliance net debt-free much before our original schedule of March 31, 2021. Over the past few weeks, we have been overwhelmed by the phenomenal interest of the global financial investor community in partnering with Jio."