Rajeev, then the union minister of state for electronics and information technology, lost to veteran Congress leader Shashi Tharoor by 16,077 votes in a fiercely contested election. It saw him almost sign off from electoral politics.
When Destiny Knocked
After graduating in electronics engineering from Manipal, Rajeev moved to the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1984 for a postgraduate degree. He completed the programme in just nine months and entered the job market. Acting on his father’s advice, he met Vinod Dham, the legendary engineer widely regarded as the architect of the pentium chip. At Intel, Rajeev rose quickly through the ranks and became one of the three engineers involved in designing the company’s next generation of processors. Even today, Intel 486 processors carry his initials alongside other engineers who worked on the project. His Bengaluru office houses a framed poster of the 386 processor bearing the caption: “One picture that’s worth 16.3 million words.” After his wedding to Anu in 1991, they were preparing to return to the United States. That was when a chance meeting with Rajesh Pilot, then communications minister, changed the course of his life. Pilot advised Rajeev to stay back and build a business in India. The rest, as they say, is history.
Entrepreneurial Leap
As a business journalist, I have had the opportunity to meet Rajeev a couple of times over the years. The first meeting was sometime in the 1990s, when he was in Mumbai with his brother-in-law, Ajit Nambiar, the present CMD of BPL Limited. During the interaction, Rajeev spoke passionately about BPL-Sanyo’s products, particularly its televisions and refrigerators. By the end of the evening, I was completely sold. He was a persuasive communicator. His command of language and logic could win over almost anyone. Technology was clearly part of his DNA. That was my first impression of him.
Thereafter, he moved out of the white-goods business and entered the telecom sector in 1994 with the launch of BPL Mobile. However, in July 2005, finding the going increasingly tough, he sold his 64 per cent stake in BPL Mobile to the Ruias of the Essar Group for USD 1.1 billion. Rajeev then founded Jupiter Capital in 2005 that manages assets across technology, media, hospitality and entertainment. In 2006, he acquired a majority stake in Asianet Communications. Two years later, he entered into a joint venture with News Corp, leading to the formation of Asianet Star Communications. Asianet News Network Pvt Ltd, under his leadership, became the holding company for his media ventures, including Asianet News, Asianet Suvarna News and the digital portal Newsable. He was also an early investor in Arnab Goswami’s Republic Network. However, he exited the venture in 2019 to comply with parliamentary disclosure norms.
The BATATA Gamble
Around 2000-01, when I was executive editor of Business India, I received a call from media strategist Ravi Shyam. At the time, Ravi was representing the UK-based private equity investor CDC (now Actis). Apparently, CDC and AIG were unhappy with Rajeev as he had not informed them about a major merger. The poster boy of India’s telecom industry stitched together a complex deal to keep BPL Mobile afloat by bringing together BPL, Birla-AT&T and the Tatas, popularly referred to as BATATA. The cellular marriage could create a Rs 10,000 crore telecom giant. However, CDC and AIG threw a spanner in the works and approached an international court to stop the merger. The setback proved costly for BPL Mobile. In 2002, Rajeev’s MoU with Idea Cellular expired, effectively ending the proposed alliance. To cut a long story short, Ravi Shyam was making a strong case for CDC, the usual PR and advocacy exercise. He asked whether I would be interested in pursuing a story that, in my view, was clearly critical of Rajeev Chandrasekhar. Without batting an eyelid, I replied matter-of-factly, “I know my history well. In a fight between an Indian and a Britisher, I will support Rajeev Chandrasekhar.”
Keralam’s Political Challenger
Rajeev could speak about any subject under the sun with authority, clarity and more importantly, facts and figures to back his arguments. That fighting spirit was evident in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections against Congress leader Shashi Tharoor. Although he lost by a small margin, but in the 2026 Keralam Assembly elections he won and strengthened his credentials as a political leader capable of expanding the BJP’s footprint in the state. This 62-year-old technocrat, businessman and politician possesses the experience, vision and resilience required to aspire for Keralam’s highest political office. Whether he ultimately becomes chief minister will depend on many factors. But few would dispute that he has emerged as one of the party’s most important faces in Kerala.