Reliance chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India, took a step away from limelight on Friday night as his wife Nita, who runs 12 schools and the Mumbai IPL team, gave a lecture at the prestigious London School of Economics.
The lecture was attended by Mr Ambani, Indian high commissioner Nalin Surie, Labour MP Barry Gardner, Baroness Usha Prasher, a Labour peer, and LSE’s Lord Meghnad Desai and Lord Nicholas Stern.
Mrs Ambani, who runs the Reliance Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Reliance Industries, said that she and her husband are working to set up a world-class university in India. “It will be our humble contribution to the national aspiration to put India on the global educational map,” she said and described it as an “obsessive passion.”
Lord Stern, who is the I.G. Patel professor of economics and government at the London School of Economics, welcomed the Ambani plans to start a new university. He said that the LSE would be very interested in cooperating with the new institution and have tie-ups or collaborations for institution building.
“In the late 1970s and early 80s when Mukesh and I met, India was considered a Third World country. It has been fascinating to see this journey from a Third World country to the third-most powerful country in the world,” she said in her 40-minute speech on the current state of India and about Reliance’s philanthropic activities over the years.