MUMBAI: Subhash Chandra. No idea if today’s GenZ AND Gen Alpha know who he was. The freedom fighter in the 1940s believed in the use of guns as much as Mahatma Gandhi did in ahimsa. He did his best to trouble the English during their occupation of India. For many he is just a name in the history books.
The modern day Subash Chandra that we know is also a doughty fighter. Excepting that he had a Goyal to his surname which he dropped. Excepting that he is an entrepreneur and a corporate warrior. The pioneer of lamitubes in the country. Now they are common place in this nation of ours but when he launched the tubes in India in the nineties as a replacement for the old aluminium toothpaste packaging, they were unfamiliar. T hey were an immediate success. Soon his Essel group was the largest manufacturer of the tubes in the worldThe pioneer of entertainment pay TV in India.
Then he launched his general entertainment television channel Zee TV, which was again a major runaway hit. It seemed whatever he touched turned to gold, or at least had to have long-term value.
Cut to two years go. In 2022, Zee got into a conversation with Sony – oops we should say Culver Max Entertainment – to merge in readiness for the media gorilla that would be formed with the merger of Reliance-Viacom18 and Disney Star India. Due diligences had been done, valuations had been arrived at, exit clauses and penalties agreed upon.
All seemed to be going well. Until dirt hit the fan and banks started calling in his loans he had taken against his equity holding in Zee to realise his grandiose ambitions to get into the development sector, that is infrastructure. The amounts were large and fingers of suspicions were pointed towards him and his son Punit the CEO of the company. Allegations that the Zee books were not all clean flew, the goateed entrepreneur was forced to step down as a director and chairman from his own company. As was his son as a director.
The banks continued to bay for his blood and some of the FIIs actually cashed in their holdings and the promoters’ equity in a company which he had built from scratch fell to sub-five per cent levels. He was suddenly a minority shareholder, with no control, no say, over the once entertainment power house he ruled with a tight fist.
Through all of this, Sony continued to say it would go ahead and wed Zee. Of course, negotiations were hard as the Zee share price had meanwhile tanked. After much discussion, a peace accord was arrived at that Punit would be MD.
Things seemed to be proceeding when before they could say hello, the proposal to form a joint venture with Sony collapsed with no hope of revival. In January earlier this year, Sony decided to officially call of their discussions with Zee TV. Two years of laborious discussions and getting ready for the merger went down the drain.
The two litigated against each other internationally and within India – Zee to get the NCLT’s order to Sony to go ahead with the joint venture and Sony seeking $90 million as penalties. They finally smoked the peace pipe in August 2024, calling of their disagreements with each other.
But some damage had been done by the banks which name called him, Sony’s backing out, all the bad press, and the impending merger between Disney-Star-Viacom18-Reliance. The Zee Entertainment share lay in the doldrums – a far cry from the Rs 500 zone it once roamed.
Zee would collapse was what many a media observer foretold: after all, from media baron Chandra was now a media fallen. Every company in his media empire – whether Zee Entertainment or Zee Media or Siti Networks or Dish TV – was facing flak from all quarters.
But not Subhash Chandra. He does not believe in giving up easily even if the powers that be in the Centre are not looking upon him kindly. Even if all the naysayers and rivals are ranging against him.
In fact, being down and out gave the 74 year old a new infusion of energy. He had something to prove to himself: that he could turn around the venture he had given birth to, nurtured, until, because of circumstances beyond his control, had gone out of his hands.
He came up with a plan to keep costs under control, let go of the flab that had accumulated in Zee Entertainment, trimmed the workforce and went back to the drawing board to begin almost as if anew. He got the professional Zeel’s board approval to back him and his rescue plan.
Along with his sons Punit and Amit, he went out into the market, calmed jittery nerves of banks, financial institutions, lenders, and the markets as a whole. He also hit the international markets and managed to get international financial institutions to invest in his abilities to get Zee back into fine fettle. He raised Rs 2,000 crore to almost every financial analyst’s disbelief. But that’s Subhash Chandra for you.
These days Subhashji or chairman (as he is called) is back on the shop floor – or should we say studio floor.
He’s rolled up his sleeves and he is back to doing what he did best in the early days of Zee TV: go by his gut and select the right stories and make them into TV shows. His goal: get Zee back to the top of the ratings charts. And be ready for the behemoth JioStar when it starts stomping its way into the marketplace with its large platter of offerings soaking up advertising and subscription revenues.
Will his magic work in today’s D2C world?
Will he win over his lost TV viewers again in an era where streaming is gnawing away at linear TV consumption?
Will he manage to get Zee5 to fire on all cylinders?
He will. That’s what he is betting on.
And we at indiantelevision.com also tend to agree.
For the gent from Hissar, Haryana, carries a name he has to live up to: Subhash Chandra.
(We asked Microsoft image generator to re-imagine Subhash Chandra as a corporate warrior and the main image of the executive with the sword is one of the images it came up with. No offence is intended to Subhash Chandra nor to anyone at Zee TV nor his family. No copyright infringement is intended either)
Pictures of Shubash Chandra courtesy his X account.
