SUBHAS CHANDRA

The Z Factor: My Journey As The Wrong Man at the Right Time by Subhash Chandra with Pranjal Sharma; Published by  Harper Collins India;  Pages 300 ; Price: Rs 699/-

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Subhash Chandra’s book is a must for every student of business management. There is an impressive cascade of case-studies that entertain and educate.  Chandra began his career in Hisar, Haryana when he was only 17 and under severe pressure. He had no financial support and was not adequately educated. He took challenges head on and made friends in unusual methods and transformed himself into an astonishingly wealthy person. He violated norms and inaugurated enterprises long before the Governments thought about it. A Man of Vision, sans doubt. Chandra has been a perennial outsider, repeatedly aiming high and breaking into businesses where he was considered an interloper.

  He travelled even as a small boy   to several mandisand  collected money from commission agents, keeping a vigil on the amount spent by the employees of his Grandpa.  Chandra used  a clever method to tackle debts by pocketing the lower echelons of power in FCI and establishing a cartel while bidding for tenders for processing grain. His friends  in FCI were given cash and other help and  they  ensured he had the lowest tenders. He was singularly lucky as he always had people rushing to his rescue.

The supply of  basmati  rice to Russia --on highly lucrative terms-heralded his major achievement.  Contracts under the rupee-rouble trade agreement were hugely  profitable, but this demanded links at the very highest level.

Enter Dhirendra Brahmachari. A  relative  introduced him to the Mighty Man. The yoga guru took him to meet Rajiv Gandhi, then a general secretary of the Congress and the P M in the making. Rajiv recalled that  Chandra   had helped the Gandhis when they were “down and out ”. There was clear  understanding  that a fair share of the profits from the rice exports would be returned to his benefactors. When he started supplying rice, Chandra realised that the profits were even larger than he had anticipated. The earlier supplier had exported cheaperparimal instead of basmati and Chandra did not change . He lost the contract two years later, when Dhirendra  Brahmachari decided to form his own company rather than use Chandra as a go-between. But, in the meantime, Gandhi and his aide  discovered that the trusted family retainer had been siphoning off some of the money and not handing it to them. A terrified Chandra was ordered to testify before the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi the actual amount he had paid the yoga guru. That proved to be Brahmachari’s undoing and soon, he lost his clout with the Gandhi family.

From tendering for grain contracts, making poles for the Posts and Telegraphs and rice deals, Chandra moved on to launching a packaging business and opening a massive amusement park, Essel World, in Mumbai. Despite opposition from some powerful state politicians and protests from environmentalists, his PR agency successfully sold the idea, claiming it was to honour Chacha Nehru’s love for children on his birth anniversary.

The greatest achievement was starting a Satellite TV channel in India at a time when the law prohibited domestic private networks. Chandra arrived in Hong Kong and parlayed for  a partnership with the then owner of STAR, Richard Li. Chandra finally got Li’s attention, offering five times the market rate for a transponder at $ 5 million. Against all odds, he launched an Indian channel from Hong Kong, becoming an NRI in the process. It was Zee’s amazing success as an entertainment pioneer which inspired many others to enter the TV business in India, including STAR. The Indian government had perforce to frame guidelines and laws for the burgeoning new industry.  His Zee TV, India's first private Indian TV channel, changed the rules of the game and tickled the fancy of a public starved of entertainment . Zee TV was only a daily-3-hour daily transmission medium. Today Zee networks has 70 channels!.

 Chandra’s incredible journey continues. He is into building infrastructure and is working on several major road projects under the PPP model. He now wants to help develop smart cities, one of the new mantras of the Modi government.

Chandra launched a Motivational Talk Show on Zee TV called “Dr,Subhas Chandra Show ” where he talks to young  Indians and addresses their concerns about Life’s challenges.

True to type, Chandra sees opportunity at every turn and grabs it. He has perfected the art of seeing bribery as facilitation fees. There are several  instances where his partners tried taking advantage of him--none eventually succeeded. Be it his first partner in Delhi in the grain business, the partner in the plastic sheet business or later in the telecom pole business .

  This is a remarkably  candid account by  a truly desi self-made businessman who came to Delhi at age twenty with seventeen rupees in his pocket. Today, he has a net worth of $6.3 billion and annual group revenues of about $3 billion.

   

 P.P.Ramachandran

April 1,2018.