Dhirubhai Ambani was one of the sons of Hirachand Gordhanbhai Ambani, a village school teacher belonging to the Modh Baniya community and Jamnaben Ambani and was born in Chorwad, Junagadh district, Gujarat on 28 December, 1932. He did his studies from Bahadur Kanji school. In his youth, he joined the protests against the Nawab of Junagarh and organized many actions against the Nawab’s plans to join Pakistan after independence.

In 1948, he left for the Port of Aden, Yemen to work for A. Besse and Co. along with his brother Ramnikbhai. He later came to sell shell and Burmah oil products for the company. There is a famous story about how he once made a lot of money by melting the silver bullion and selling it as pure silver because he knew that the value of pure silver was much higher than the bullion thus was a precursor to his financial wizardry and acumen.

His friends described him as someone who was affable yet ambitious, cheerful yet had a ‘dark side’ because of his extreme ambition and risk taking. In Aden, his first son, Mukesh was born to him in 1957. Another son, Anil, was born two years later in 1959.

He left Aden in 1958 to try his hand at his own business in India in the textiles market .

During this period, Ambani and his family stayed in a two-bedroom apartment at the Jai Hind Estate in Bhuleshwar, Mumbai. In 1965, Champaklal Damani and Dhirubhai Ambani ended their partnership and Ambani started on his own. It is believed that both had different temperaments and a different take on how to conduct business. While Damani was a cautious trader and did not believe in building yarn inventories, Ambani was a known risk-taker and believed in building inventories to increase profit. In 1966 he formed Reliance Commercial Corporation which later became Reliance Industries on 08 May 1973.

Following his first stroke in 1986, Ambani handed over control of Reliance to his sons, Mukesh and Anil. In November 2004, Mukesh in an interview admitted to having differences with Anil over ownership issues. He also said that the differences “are in the private domain”. After the death of Dhirubhai Ambani, the group was split into Reliance Industries Limited headed by Mukesh, and Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group headed by Anil.

In 1988, Reliance Industries came up against a rights issue regarding partly convertible debentures. It was rumoured that the company was making all efforts to ensure that their stock prices did not slide an inch. Sensing an opportunity, The Bear Cartel, a group of stock brokers from Calcutta, started to short sell the shares of Reliance. To counter this, a group of stock brokers until recently referred to as “Friends of Reliance” started to buy the short sold shares of Reliance Industries on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

In 1988 an unauthorized biography of Dhirubhai Ambani, by Hamish McDonald with the title The Polyester Prince, outlined all his political and business conquests. The book was not published in India because the Ambanis threatened legal action; an updated version went on sale under the title Ambani and Sons in 2010, and there has been no action against the publisher so far.

Ambani was admitted to the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai on 24 June 2002 after he suffered a major stroke. It was his second stroke, the first had occurred in February 1986 and had paralyzed his right hand. He was in a coma for more than a week and a number of doctors were consulted. He died on 6 July 2002.

A Hindi film said to be loosely inspired by the life of Dhirubhai Ambani was released on 12 January 2007. Guru, directed by filmmaker Mani Ratnam, cinematography by Rajiv Menon and music by A.R.Rahman shows the struggle of a man striving to make his mark in the Indian business world with a fictional Shakti Group of Industries.

As of 2017, the company has more than 250,000 employees. In 2012, Reliance Industries was one of the two Indian companies to be ranked among the top 100 in the Fortune 500 list of the world’s largest companies by revenue.