Subhash Chandra Goenka

Subhash Chandra Goenka is an Indian entrepreneur and media baron. He was the founder of one of the most-watched television networks, Zee TV. Goenka grew up in Adampur, in the Hisar district of Haryana. He was born to a family of food traders, who taught him the norms of business at a very early age. Goenka had to give up formal education in 1965 to help out his family to pay away their massive debts. Working as an agent for the Food Corporation of India, he began cultivating new ideas for production. After accumulating enough capital, he founded the company, Essel packaging, in 1980. The establishment produced plastic consumer packaging for goods like toothpaste. The brand became a great success, and he even built an amusement park called Essel World in Mumbai. The Essel Group slowly began branching out to other sectors of the industry.

In 1992, he started the Zee TV network in association with Hong Kong’s Star TV. At the time of its founding, it was one of the only two private commercial television channels. The network catered to different facets of television across multiple regional languages. The first-ever satellite television provider in the country, Dish TV, was also the brainchild of this organization. Goenka’s growth in media also extended to news when he founded the ‘DNA’ newspaper. The English language paper, which was launched through the Dainik Bhaskar group, has a wide circulation across the nation and ranks as one of the most read newspapers. It had to battle the already existing ‘Times of India’ to retain its significance in the competitive industry.

Goenka went on to participate in politics and contested the Rajya Sabha elections as an independent candidate. He won the seat in the upper house as a representative of the Haryana State. His association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in his earlier days grew into support for the BJP part. He has talked about his life in business and politics through his autobiography, ‘The Z factor: My journey as the wrong man at the right time.’

Goenka retired as the chairman of the media group in 2016, handing over the reins to his sons. The network currently boasts an astounding 1.3 billion viewers in 173 countries. He was awarded the International Emmy Directorate Award in 2011. He remains one of the most prolific figures in the media industry whose immense impact has revolutionized the Nation’s entertainment sector.