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Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

> Mukhesh Ambani who's got a good connect with the current ruling Government

To be fair, Mukesh has got good connections everywhere. He is India's most powerful person.

Amitabh and the Shahrukh (some of the world's richest actors, both half billionaires) both volunteered as servers at his daughters wedding as a show of appreciation. If a man can command the most powerful of his country to such level of willful subservience, then every Govt. will try to curry favor with him.

I will add, that while his intentions might be entirely selfish, the pace at which Jio was able to bring affordable 4G to the whole country is incredibly empowering for rural / small town India.

That being said, adding money to the pool of what is quickly becoming a monopoly is not a "fund to digitize America" as Pichai put it.

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> volunteered as servers at his daughters wedding as a show of appreciation.

> can command the most powerful of his country to such level of willful subservience

To me there's a disconnect between the two phrases. I don't think they were volunteering to humiliate themselves, but rather to show how close they were. Let's say hypothetically that Bill Gates had become really good pal with Jeff Bezos and that you went to an event that one of the two had organized and you saw the other serving the punch, would you say that he's being subservient?

> volunteered as servers at his daughters wedding ... subservience

I don't know about you, but when I hear "working as a server at a wedding attended by many powerful people", I don't think "subservience", I think "unique opportunity to make connections, and to potentially snoop insider information."

I am not sure you comprehend the fame and reach of the actors mentioned. They don’t need connections, they are super famous in their own right.

Also note, Amitabh is in his late seventies. I doubt he is interested in connections at his age.

You must not know of Amitabh and the Shahrukh -- they're not some smalltime actors that need to get a leg up. This would be like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt offering to be servers at Jeff Bezos' daughters wedding. It's absurdly subservient.

Do not ignore cultural differences. If you see such an activity as a job, then you would arrive at a conclusion like yours.

In India, it's common for hosts to serve food as a sign of respect to their guests. Close friends and family of hosts also join. This only showed the closeness of the relationships among Mukesh and other stars. Seeing it as a subservient act isn't accurate, no big star would sign up if it were so.

To give another example, often times, the servers for these weddings aren't people you pay but rather your close friends and family.

This is correct. I'm not Indian but my wife is and I've observed it many times as an insider "outsider".

Subservient isn't the right word I think. A lot of rich and famous attended the Ambani wedding events – Clinton, Huffington etc and a lot of celebrities from world over.

Beyonce did a show too. So did a lot of Bollywood celebrities. These celebrities do paid gigs at these ultra rich wedding parties.

https://www.wmagazine.com/story/isha-ambani-wedding-india-hi...

Attending an event as a guest is very, very different than attending an event as a server...

Serving in many Indian weddings can be done by friends and family. It's like showing that you're very close to the family.

Not too long ago, it used to be that family and friends would get together to cook for the wedding.

Not really, people whose status is beyond question can do stuff like this just because they feel like it. I attended a high school play at a fancy private school in Texas and to my surprise the parking lot attendant was Michael Dell, who had a kid in the school. Nobody said “yuk yuk Dell is such a loser he worked the parking lot.”

Well said.

Random language usage question: in India, if someone is referred to as a billionaire, would that be in terms of rupees or dollars? (1 billion INR is ~13.3 million USD)

Or does it essentially never come up because a typical Indian would use lakh/crore instead? Is there's something like a "lakh croreaire"?

Indians use "crorepati" for someone with a crore rupees. Interestingly, the Indian equivalent of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" is "Kaun Banega Crorepati" (who will become a crorepati).

As for millionaire/billionaire, imo it's hard to tell but on HN I would infer USD. (Amitabh Bachchan's net worth is ~$400M based on a quick search.)

> the Indian equivalent of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" is "Kaun Banega Crorepati"

The North Indian equivalent is called so. Atleast, In TN we have our own version of the show, based on the same "Crore" denomination but not thus called.

What is this fetish by some people to always label things "North Indian"? It is a national show on a national television where the participants are from all around India (from Ladakh to Tamil Nadu, Gujarat to Arunachal Pradesh).

> Or does it essentially never come up because a typical Indian would use lakh/crore instead?

Exactly. USD is almost always implied when million/billion is used

Yeah, for millionaire/billionaire the definition shifts to the western one. Mukesh was/is also top 10 richest globally I believe.

If you see a billion being used it is usually the Western style. So when you say someone is a billionaire it is in USD. If you want an Indian take on it, it would be: Lakhpati and Crorepati.

I'm not familiar with Mukhesh Ambani or his reputation, but sounds like he's India's version of China's Jack Ma? Jack Ma and Alibaba came to the forefront due in part to his connections to the Chinese government.

On the topic itself, it's unclear what Google's intentions are and how they could benefit from such an investment. $10B is not a big sum so is the purpose altruistic or as grease for other purposes?

Not really. Mukesh Ambani was born a billionaire. His father was India's biggest power and oil baron.

Afaik, the Ambani dynasty of 2 generations has been India's richest for about 30 years now.

More like the Koch brothers. Inherited a vast company with tremendous financial and political resources and made them even vaster and more deeply rooted.

I wouldn't call Mukhesh Ambani as Jack Ma. He inherited a lot of wealth and more important, a lot of government connections. He can bend rules for e.g. his non-existent Jio University got the tag "Institution of Eminence"

He gets foreign technology and just jumps in any sector with governments blessing. Be it oil and gas, infra projects or even telecom

Unlike Jack, Mukesh's father started with Reliance Polyester then expanded the business. Mukesh took it to even greater heights.

Companies aren't altruistic, their only purpose is to provide value to shareholders. That doesn't mean this is a greasing, it could just be google wanting more people connected to the internet so more people use their products.

> Companies aren't altruistic, their only purpose is to provide value to shareholders.

Companies do whatever their owners tell them to do. What you are talking about one specific model of what some people think they should do and what purpose they should serve in society. A very popular and possibly even 'default' model, but only one of many.

https://blog.corplaw.ie/bid/317212/Shareholder-Stakeholder-T...

etc

that said, assuming altruism here even if there aren't immediately obvious benefits to the company would probably be a bit naive.

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