NEW DELHI: Essel Group Chairman and noted philanthropist Subhash Chandra has been elected to the Rajya Sabha as an independent candidate from Haryana.
Chandra was supported by the Haryana unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party who receoived 29 votes.
His election coincides with the Essel Group completing ninety years of existence.
Chandra launched the first private satellite television channel Zee TV in 1992 and later the first private news channel Zee News.
For his outstanding contributions to the media industry, Dr Chandra was awarded the 2011 International Emmy Directorate Award at the 39th International Emmy Awards in New York - first to receive the award recognizing excellence in television programming outside the United States.
He also now presents a weekly Dr Subhash Chandra Show, where he shares the lessons learnt by him in his journey with an invited audience and an estimated 230+ million viewers across the country and overseas.
Born on 30 November 1950, he dropped out of school in 1970 while in 10th grade to join family business of commission agent and trader who procured and supplied rice to Food Corporation of India.
In the 1980s, he started manufacturing flexible packaging (mainly plastic tubes) for toothpaste, etc. under the name Essel Packaging. He followed up with a leisure park EsselWorld in north Mumbai. In 1992, he launched Zee Television, in collaboration with Li Ka Shing and the first online lottery and first Dish TV in India.
His TV channels number around 70 in different languagesHe started the Indian Cricket League, a domestic Twenty20 league but failed.In November 2009, he took over management responsibility of the English Daily News & Analysis (DNA) newspaper. The DNA had been launched in 2005 in collaboration with the Dainik Bhaskar group/ Chandra is the founder-Chairman of the Global Foundation for Civilizational Harmony, an interfaith group. He has donated land for Global Vipassana Pagoda at Borivili and contributed to the spread of this meditation method.
Late last month, Chandra stepped down from the post of director and non-executive chairman of Zee Media.
