Following in Subhash Chandra's enterprising footsteps will not be easy, but Punit Goenka seems to have learned enough from his father to lead Zee TV in the right direction
Start, scale up, hand it over, start another one: That is a one-line descriptor for Subhash Chandra, head of the $2.5 billion Essel Group. Never afraid to grow new businesses from scratch, he is apparently itching for a new project now, at the age of 63.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. From trading goods, erecting telephone poles, setting up a packaging industry to opening up theme parks and multiplexes, and creating one of the most profitable TV media groups as well as launching an English newspaper, Chandra has identified opportunities and jumped right in. You could say he is always in the build mode. Once he sets up a business, he typically hands it over to a family member to run it.
He entered the media business—making it one of the biggest Indian media empires in just two decades—later than other Marwaris; it is now being managed by son Punit Goenka.
It was an unexpected move from Chandra, when he decided to set up India’s first satellite TV by launching Zee TV in 1992; even his entry into print media was surprising. In 2005, he joined hands with another Marwari-owned newspaper empire—the Dainik Bhaskar group—to start DNA, an English daily meant to challenge Times of India in their home turf, Mumbai.
Money Matters
(This story appears in the 21 March, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)