Subhash Chandra

Subhash Chandra is an Indian millionaire media baron, founder of Essel Group, an Indian media company. He was the founder of Zee TV. He is the former chairman of Zee Media and was elected for the Upper House of Indian Parliament for Haryana state in 2016 elections. He was born on 30 November 1950 in Adampur, Punjab ( present day Haryana ). His family was facing a financial crisis and thus he had to drop out of school in 1965.

Since he has to support his family as well, he joined his family business of commission agents and traders who used to procure supplied rice to the Food Corporation of India. Gradually, he started manufacturing plastic tubes and other flexible packaging under the brand name Essel Packaging. This was followed by the setup of the leisure park Essel World in North Mumbai. In 1992, he launched the 2nd private commercial television channel in the country with Star TV, Zee TV, & in 2003, Dish TV, the first satellite television provider in India.

In 2005, Chandra launched DNA, an English language daily newspaper in collaboration with Dainik Bhaskar. But, in 2019, DNA was defunct and eventually had to shut down. In the same year, he had to resign from the post of the chairman of Zee Entertainment Enterprises, as per the SEBI Listing Regulations but continues to be the non-executive director of the company. In 2020, Zee Entertainment Ltd. appointed promoter Subhash Chandra as chairman emeritus after his resignation from the post of non-executive director of the firm. He is presently connected with the firm in an honorary fashion. In 2022, Chandra filed his nomination for the Rajya Sabha elections from the state of Rajasthan as an independent candidate, backed by the BJP, but lost.