At $44.3 bn, Mukesh Ambani beats Alibaba's Jack Ma as Asia's richest man

Reliance Industries chief Mukesh Ambani has overtaken Alibaba founder Jack Ma to become Asia's richest person. Mukesh Ambani's wealth has been estimated at $44.3 billion on Friday with Reliance Industries shares soaring to a huge high, according to a Bloomberg report. 

Reliance Industries is trading 1.7 percent higher as per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with the stock trading at Rs 1,100.65 as of 12.25 p.m. in Mumbai, which is a record. It closed at Rs 1,101. Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma's wealth has been estimated at $44 billion on Thursday in the US.

Reliance is reaping the fruits of its newest company Reliance Jio and it has doubled its petrochemicals capacity too, leading to Ambani adding another $4 billion to his fortune. He also announced his plans to leverage his 215 million telecom subscribers to expand his e-commerce offerings, as per the report. Significantly, this year Ma lost $1.4 billion in wealth.

Ambani is best known for successfully executing large-scale projects. He led the way to construct the world's largest refining complex in Jamnagar and is the owner of a massive mobile data network along with the country's biggest as well as most-profitable retail firm.

Watch this Zee Business video here:

Ambani said in this month's shareholders' meeting that Reliance saw its "biggest growth opportunity in creating a hybrid, online-to-offline new commerce platform," involving the group’s Reliance Retail Ltd. and Reliance Jio businesses.

Reliance Jio is also set to introduce a fiber-based broadband service across 1,100 Indian cities in August. To this announcement, Ambani said that this would be the biggest greenfield fixed-line rollout across the world.