– By Nitin Chaudhary, Founder of NC Financial Advisory Services.
There has been a lot of noise which is doing rounds globally attached to all the fanfare and celebration waves which are seen and more likely going viral on social media – Ambani Wedding.
Wedding of Mr. Anant Ambani & Ms. Radhika Merchant. Son of the Richest Indian and one of the top ten rich people globally, the owner of the Reliance Group has an interest in Refineries to Retail, Textile to Telecom etc. and many more such verticals.
There have been events and celebrations going on for months now, hopefully culminating with both individuals tying the knot on the 12th of July in Mumbai. Each of their events has been the talk of the town globally and has had the most prominent personalities as Guests attending each event.
Astounding figures have been doing rounds which have been paid to each celebrity performer, be it from Bollywood or Hollywood, Be it a National singer or an International performer.
There have been figures as high as INR 4000 – 5000 Crs as the total expenditure that the family will end up spending as the cost of the wedding in its entirety.
Although these figures might sound exorbitant to any common man, let’s have a different perspective on it and see if it rings a bell.
We are aware that Indians are already known for their big fat Indian wedding around the world and be it rich or poor, a wedding is one such event in the family wherein the family doesn’t shy away from spending. Leave apart the Rich, families from below the poverty line, Middle-class families or upper-middle-class families they save their life earnings to spend on their child’s wedding.
A family which has a net worth of INR 50 lakhs to 1 crore will not shy away from spending 10-15 lakhs on their child’s wedding. Similarly, a well-to-do family having a net worth of around 10 Crore INR would easily spend anywhere between INR 50 lakhs to 1.5 crore on their child’s wedding. Considering that even the community that the family belongs to impacts the extravagance or simplicity of the wedding the expenditure might vary.
Now when we look at all these figures in terms of percentage, we can see that any Indian family across the sect would end up spending between 5% to 15% of their total wealth for their child’s marriage. Although these are all estimated figures we feel they are more or less close to actual numbers that might work out.
Coming back to the Ambani wedding, although we are not aware of the figures related to the wedding expenditure going with the probability of INR 4000-5000 Cr as our best estimate for the expense that the family will bear, it is important to look at the percentage expenditure. As per Forbes Mr. Mukesh Ambani’s net worth is 123.2 Billion $ (10,28,544 crores) in the year 2024. To keep it simple we will look at it in Billion $ itself.
Considering INR 5000 Crores as expenditure, this works out to be approximately 0.6 Bn $. As we look at it in percentage terms, it works out to be approximately 0.5% of the Ambani Family’s net worth.
There is a stark difference between what an average Indian Family would be spending on a child’s marriage against what the Ambani Family is spending as a percentage of the total net worth of the family.
Without prejudice, this leaves us with a question to ponder upon. Should an average Indian Family bring down their expenses related to marriage in their family? Or is the Ambani Family going beyond what is needed to celebrate a marriage in their family?
Magic is all about the Perspective of Absolute figures vis-à-vis percentages. The entire gamut of Finance and the financial products is hidden in this.
