Mukesh Ambani told the whole story of BlackRock dealImage Credit source: ai generated
We often hear that big business deals take months and sometimes years to complete. Army of lawyers, long meetings and lots of paperwork are part of it. But when it comes to Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, this thing changes. Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani has recently made such a disclosure that even the business world is surprised to hear it. He told that his partnership worth thousands of crores with the world’s largest asset manager company ‘BlackRock’ was decided not in any board room, but in the back seat of a car.
Those 5 minutes that changed the game
In fact, at Jio-BlackRock’s ‘Investing for a New Era’ event held in Mumbai, Mukesh Ambani told everyone about his conversation with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. Recalling that meeting in 2023, Mukesh Ambani said that it did not take him much time to convince Larry Fink. “This was a conversation we had in 2023. It took me just five minutes to say, ‘Larry, BlackRock should come back to India’,” Ambani said.
BlackRock CEO Larry immediately turned around and asked, “Will you partner with me?” It was from here that the foundation of a major revolution in India’s financial sector was laid. Larry Fink told that he had to go from one place to another and this historic deal was finalized in the same car ride.
2700 crore mega plan
The result of this five-minute conversation was that Reliance’s financial arm ‘Jio Financial Services’ and American giant ‘BlackRock’ joined hands. Both the companies together formed a Joint Venture (JV), whose total investment value is 300 million dollars i.e. about Rs 2717 crore. Both the companies have equal stake in this partnership.
BlackRock is the ‘Bahubali’ of the world of money.
The company run by 73-year-old Larry Fink is the world’s largest asset manager. If we look at the figures, by the end of December 2025, BlackRock was handling investments of more than 14 trillion dollars (Mahashankha). Such a huge amount is more than the total economy of many countries. On the other hand, there is Mukesh Ambani, whose company Reliance Industries is present in every major sector like oil, gas, telecom and retail and his own net worth is close to 103.8 billion dollars.