For big tech, all roads to India's digital space seem to go through Ambani

The 63-year-old Indian tycoon has identified technology and retail as future growth areas in a pivot away from the energy businesses he inherited from his father

Big Tech is clamoring for a bigger piece of India’s booming internet space, but that increasingly seems to mean going through the country’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani.

Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. is said to be offering to sell a stake of about $20 billion in its retail business to Amazon.com Inc., Bloomberg News reported this week. If Ambani succeeds in pulling off such a deal, it would mark another victory for the billionaire, who in recent months has secured $20 billion of investment in his digital unit from marquee names including Facebook Inc. and Google Inc.

The mere possibility of an Amazon