Mukesh Ambani became the fifth richest person in the world on the Forbes global rich list on Wednesday as Reliance Industries' (RIL's) market capitalisation on Wednesday topped the Rs 13-trillion mark including the partly paid shares.

Ambani, who owns half of RIL’s equity, managed to achieve this feat after raising funds from a slew of marquee investors in the Jio wireless telephony business. In the Forbes Real-time Billionaires' list, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, tops the league table, followed by Bill Gates, Bernard Arnault family, Mark Zukerberg followed by Ambani. He is ahead of Elon Musk, Larry Ellison and Warren Buffett.

In US dollar terms, Forbes estimated Ambani's wealth at $75.1 billion. Fully-paid shares of RIL ended at Rs 2,004 a share, up 1.64 per cent, while partly-paid shares ended at Rs 1,107 on Wednesday. The market value of fully paid shares currently stands at Rs 12.7 trillion and that of partly-paid shares is Rs 46,765, giving it a total market cap of Rs 13.17 trillion. Only earlier this month, RIL had crossed the Rs 12 trillion m-cap mark.

In the last few months, RIL has surprised the street with its monetisation efforts in spite of a lock down. Fourteen deals to sell 33 per cent stake in Jio Platforms (JPL), stake sale in the fuel JV, and a rights issue in total raises Rs 2.1 trillion ($28bn), and made RIL net-debt free.

Analysts said RIL’s future looks positive as its very large capex cycle draws to a close, earning increased for the energy business initially, followed by sharp increases for Jio/Retail. “RIL is now outperforming the benchmark Nifty for the sixth year. From the lows in March, RIL is up 110% (vs Nifty +41%). From end-2014, when this cycle began, RIL is up 4.1 times (vs the Nifty’s rise of 30%). “While the run has been very been very strong, and valuations are getting rich, we believe the outperformance may sustain. Despite a subdued FY21F (weak energy business, Covid-19 impact), we expect 29% CAGR in consolidated earnings over FY20-23F,”said a Nomura report.

At its recent AGM, Ambani said that the company's capital raise target is complete, and it will now look to add only strategic partners. While the proposed transaction to sell 20% stake in oil to chemicals (O2C) to Saudi Aramco is delayed, Ambani said RIL is committed to a partnership with the Saudi company. To facilitate this, it is planning to spin off the O2C business into a separate subsidiary.

RIL will also look to induct global partners/investors in its retail business in the next few quarters, and will invite more investments before eventually listing retail and Jio through share sale.