Rajeev Chandrasekhar looks good. His eyes are bright, handlebar moustache luxuriantly black and with a dapper upward twirl at both ends, and he smiles easily and contagiously. He also looks fit, a result, he later says, of regular workouts (it turns out he lost 30kg in eight months since July 2005). That’s radically different from how he used to look a few years ago, but Chandrasekhar sets the tone for this meeting by stating upfront that he is “focused on the future”, not on events of the past.
The meeting is at Chandrasekhar’s old office in Bangalore. Only, the name on front is new. Jupiter Capital is the company Chandrasekhar founded in July 2005 even as he set out to reinvent himself and his business interests. The makeover that has followed since has been nothing short of dramatic.
Big bucks: Chandrasekhar will host a radio show of blues and contemporary rock music. (Illustration by Jayachandran/ Mint).
Clearly, being a member of the upper house of Parliament, Rajya Sabha, suits the man (he is also chief of what is, arguably, India’s second most powerful industry lobby, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, or Ficci). And, the former Intel techie and BPL Mobile boss isn’t just any parliamentarian. He is the man who kindled what can only be called
l’affaire derivatives.
Over the past few months, several small, mid-sized, even large companies have announced mark-to-market losses on foreign exchange derivatives they originally bought to prevent themselves from risks associated with currency fluctuations (some of the companies have since taken the banks to court alleging that they were “mis-sold” the derivatives which, they further claim, are in violation of the RBI rules). Chandrasekhar’s involvement with the issue stems from a question he asked of finance minister P. Chidambaram in Parliament. It was in response to this query about the quantum of derivatives in the Indian banking system that Chidambaram made his by-now famous revelation that there were Rs127.86 trillion worth of derivatives on the books of Indian banks as on March this year.
Chandrasekhar’s question was an intelligent one. But then, the engineer son of Air Commodore M.K. Chandrasekhar is known to be smart.
While a student in the US, he met and married Anju Nambiar the daughter of BPL founder T.P. Gopala Nambiar. On his return to India in 1991, he went to work for the group, at that time one of India’s best-known consumer products companies. A chance encounter with one of his father’s former air force colleagues, Rajesh Pilot, then India’s minister for telecom, convinced Chandrasekhar to enter the fledgling mobile telephony business in the country.