SUBHASH CHANDRA
Industrialist, media czar and philanthropist, Subhash Chandra, the chairman of Zee Networks and Essel Group is of the belief that 'paths are made by walking and walking down beaten paths is for beaten men'.
True to his belief, he is one man who has made a habit of walking the un-beaten path and turning each new-untouched venture into a huge success. He started out with 17rupees in his pocket and now said to be worth over 4000 crores.
Subhash Chandra, was born on November 30, 1950 at Adampur Mandi village, Hissar, Haryana. He dropped his studies after class 12. He started showing business acumen at a very tender age.
At the age of three, he told his father, then a cotton seed trader, that he need not pay high prices if he wants to make a profit. The young lad, at the age of 19, started his own vegetable oil unit and within a span of few years his company showed a turnover of US $ 2.5 million.
His keen business sense helps him generate business ideas by mere observation. His visit to a packaging exhibition in 1981 made him come out with an innovative packaging idea-Essel Packaging Limited (today known as Essel Propack Limited).
Subhash Chandra's visit to amusement parks abroad made him develop Asia's largest amusement/theme parks in India- EsselWorld (developed in 1988) and Water Kingdom (developed in 1998) in the North-West Suburbs of Mumbai.
Spread on a 64-acre area of land, EsselWorld is Asia's first eco-friendly amusement/theme park. Another project of opening a channel was his dream and Indian laws did not permit him to pursue his idea. Dedicated as he was, he found a way out and now he is attributed for bringing home the first private satellite television channel named Zee TV on October 2 1992.
Today , Zee has several mainstream entertainment channels and regional channels beaming into millions of home nationwide and abroad.
MAHESH MURTHY
On asked what he does, Mahesh Murthy describes himself as a person who helps fund ideas that have the potential to change the world.
After long stints in Hong Kong and the US, Mahesh moved back to Mumbai, where he set up and runs Passionfund, an angel investment fund. He is also the founder of the upcoming Marketing Firm called Pinstorm.
A well acknowledged Marketing guru, Mahesh Murthy has had a long association with the world of media, TV and advertising, having worked with the likes of FCB Ulka , Trikaya (now Grey) and Ogilvy in India and Hong Kong.
Murthy was also involved in the launch and marketing of some of the world's top online brands, starting with Yahoo in 1995, amazon.com in 1996 and MSN in 1997. He helped Nike, Coca-cola, MCI and Sony shape their interactive strategies.
Murthy helped launch MTV in the region with a set of promos that won him the Best Young Director award at Cannes. Mahesh Murthy joined Channel [V] as their country head in India in 1999, repositioning the channel and starting vIndia.com.
For the last couple of years, Mahesh has been concentrating solely on the companies he's funded: helping build them from the idea stage and working hands on all the aspects- from naming and site design to business strategy, pricing, alliances, obtaining further funding.
On the side, he spends quite a bit of time and effort counselling and giving lectures to young aspiring entrepreneurs. To date, Mahesh Murthy has helped start over 12 successful start-ups which is a remarkable achievement for a man who started out as a college dropout and as a door-door salesman with Eureka Forbes.
Prof. ANIL K. GUPTA (Ph.D., Management, M.Sc.(Genetics), B.Sc.(Hons), Agri)
Adjudged as one of the Star Personalities of Asia among the fifty leaders at the forefront of change by Business Week, New York (Business Week, Asian Edition, July 2, 2001), Prof. Anil K. Gupta has always supported business entrepreneurship and innovative ideas.
He has spent a considerable part of his professional life working towards the goal of making India a sanctuary or an incubator for green grassroots innovations from all over the world. His desire to develop a platform to recognise, respect and reward local innovators was the stimulus behind the creation of the Honey Bee network.
The name Honey Bee was chosen to reflect how innovations are collected without making the innovators poorer and how connections are created between innovators.
Honey Bee network has demonstrated that by building upon a resource in which poor people are rich in, that is their knowledge, a new paradigm of development can be unleashed. To help provide support structures for grass roots innovators and link formal and informal knowledge systems, SRISTI (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions), a global initiative and a NGO, to network local innovators was established in 1993. It provides organisational support to the Honey Bee network in over 70 countries.
Prof. Anil K Gupta's efforts were duly recognised when he was awarded the Padma Shri National Award by the President of India on the eve of Republic Day 26 January 2004 for distinguished achievements in the field of management education. He currently holds Kasturbhai Lalbhai Chair in Entrepreneurship at IIM, Ahmedabad, where he continues his life long work of nurturing young talent and supporting grassroots innovation.
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