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Reliance Industries Limited Chairman & Managing Director Mukesh Ambani is known not only for his entrepreneurial leadership but also for his extravagant lifestyle. Antilia, Mukesh Ambani’s luxurious house in Mumbai, is one of the most talked about. Antilia is a 27-story skyscraper mansion on Altamount Road. The property is named after a mythical island that is said to be in the Atlantic Ocean. The building was designed by the architecture firm Perkins & Will and Hirsch Bednar Associates.
Antilia is touted as one of the world’s most expensive private homes. The impressive 27-story structure spans approximately 400,000 square feet and was built for Rs 15,000 crore. Mukesh Ambani’s younger brother, Anil Ambani, lives in his opulent mansion,’ Abode’. However, their successful journey to these billion-dollar mansions started in a modest Mumbai chawl.
Yet, not too long ago, Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani lived in Mumbai’s chawls. One toilet served 100 people; a family of seven lived in one room. 500 people were living in the chawl, and had to frequently wait in long lines for water. The Ambani brothers lived through Mumbai’s chawl life for many years. On Simi Garewal’s show, Rendezvous with Simi Garewal, Anil Ambani became emotional as he recalled his early years. Dhirubhai Ambani returned to India in 1959 after quitting his work at a gas station in Yemen. The Ambani family had moved to Mumbai from Gujarat. Due to their lack of a reliable source of income, Dhirubhai Ambani was somehow able to support the family by selling spices.
The Ambani family previously lived in a crowded neighborhood in Mumbai known as Kabootar Khana. Within this neighborhood was a chawl called Jai Hind Estate, which housed more than 500 people in one building. The Ambani family lived on the fourth floor of this chawl. It was called “Kabootar Khana” because of the large number of pigeons that gathered in the area. People would frequently feed the pigeons, resulting in flocks of them occupying the area.
The Ambani family of seven lived in a very small one-room flat, with one kitchen, on the fourth floor of the chawl. There was no bathroom in their flat, so they shared a common bathroom with over 100 people. The family somehow habituated themselves to queuing for drinking water, and they endured what many would consider impossible circumstances. They did not have enough clothes, so the two brothers, Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani, frequently swapped and wore each other’s clothes.
The Jai Hind chawl, where the Ambani family inhabited, was the largest chawl in that vicinity. Their home had no bathroom. Each floor contained over 100 houses, sharing just one toilet. Later in the interview, Anil expressed that as children, their favorite day of the week was the weekend. The family looked forward to the weekend with great excitement. It was on Sundays that Mukesh and Anil Ambani would be able to play football. Dhirubhai Ambani would take the children to Udupi restaurants, and they all had to choose from a fixed menu of idlis and sambar. They were not allowed to order anything beyond idli-sambar.
Due to the hardworking nature and talent of Dhirubhai Ambani, Reliance Industries was established, which resulted in billions of dollars in wealth for Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani. Today, Mukesh Ambani is the owner of Antilia, which is one of the largest homes in the world valued at Rs 15,000 crores, while Anil Ambani lives with his family in Abode, a Rs 5,000 crore building.
