Australia’s chief diplomat in India Philip Green receives rare invitation to Ambani family’s lavish wedding

Australia’s chief diplomat in India was just one of a handful of ambassadors invited to attend the extravagant wedding of billionaire Anant Ambani and his bride Radhika Merchant, it can be revealed.

Anant Ambani (29) is the youngest son of India’s richest man and married his bride after months of celebrations in a traditional Hindu ceremony over two days in Mumbai on the weekend.

Philip Green has been working closely with Reliance trying to facilitate major green energy deals between Reliance Industries, the company founded by Anant’s grandfather in 1947 and now India’s largest publicly listed company.

Chaired by Anant’s father Mukesh Ambani, Reliance Industries is worth has an estimated net worth of US$113 billion according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

Green, Australia’s High Commissioner to India, was one of just a handful of ambassadors who were sent an ornate invitation, which came in a scented box.

Western guests were invited to wear Indian traditional and Indian formal dress.

“I was very pleased to attend the Anant-Radhika wedding and wish them all the very best for the future,” Green wrote on social media.

“It was also an opportunity to connect with a range of friends from India’s political and economic leadership — all big supporters of the Australia-India bilateral relationship.”

The other ambassadors were from Australia’s Five Eyes intelligence partners, US, UK and Canada as well as Japan, a member of the Quad.

Mr Green attended two days of the festivities in Mumbai, alongside a cast of VIPs that included Bollywood stars, two former UK Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Tony Blair, as well as Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg, Nick Jonas, Priyanka Chopra and others.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also made an appearance but there were notably no other high-profile serving heads of state who attended.

The event was also stuffed with high-profile business and corporate figures including the head of HSBC Bank, a sign of the networking that goes on at weddings of this size and stature.

India, the world’s most populous nation and a potential superpower is one of Australia’s priority relationships on both a trade and economic front as well as on security.

The West hopes that India’s growth could help balance against Chinese dominance in the region and wants to boost trading and people-to-people links with the world’s largest democracy, as well as increase military cooperation.

Author James Crabtree, whose book The Billionaire Raj examines the huge inequalities between India’s poor and elite mega-wealthy 1 per cent, said Indian weddings were serious business.

“Invite lists for gand Indian weddings are both strategic and designed to attract attention,” he told The Nightly.

“Foreign diplomats matter much less than domestic politicians, foreign business leaders and movie stars.

“But those that get the nod are most likely from countries in which Reliance has important business contacts, rather than an expression of a well thought through geopolitical worldview.”

The Australia India Institute held a closed-doors gathering on the sidelines of the Clean Energy Council’s energy conference in Sydney this week dedicated to building trading ties.

Lisa Singh from the Australia India Institute told The Nightly that Australia had enormous opportunities in India’s decarbonisation efforts but that both countries were bewildered by each other’s investment and regulatory processes and it was holding back deals worth billions of dollars.

“The importance of the clean energy relationship for Australia and India lies at the heart of the economic relationship that is why we invited the Ambani-owned Reliance energy company to the Australia-India Renewables Dialogue this week,” Ms Singh said.

“To have our High Commissioner represent our country at the Ambani wedding shows how integral the clean energy partnership continues to be.

“I was pleased that there was representation from Brookfield at our dialogue today as the Reliance-Brookfield deal in solar energy remains the standout of building a stronger clean energy partnership.”

Reliance has ambitions to become one of the world’s leading green energy exporters and Australia’s former Chief Scientist Alan Finkel sits on its New Energy Council.