Subrata Roy (10 June 1948 – 14 November 2023) was an Indian businessman who founded the Sahara India family in 1978.
The Sahara India Pariwar operated a large number of businesses such as Aamby Valley City, Sahara Movie Studios, Air Sahara, Uttar Pradesh Wizards, and Filmy.
Roy was named the tenth most influential Indian businessman by India Today in 2012. In 2004, Time magazine described the Sahara Group as “the second largest employer in India after the Indian Railways”. Sahara operates through over 5,000 establishments across India and has a workforce of approximately 1.2 million (fields and offices) under Sahara India.
Early Life
Subrata Roy was born on 10 June 1948 in Araria to Sudhir Chandra Roy and Chhavi Roy in a Bengali Hindu family. His father and mother belonged to a rich zamindar family called Bhagyakul Zamindar of Dhaka, Bikrampur, East Bengal (now Bangladesh).
Roy studied at Holy Child Institute, Kolkata and later studied Mechanical Engineering at the Government Institute of Technology, Gorakhpur. Roy began his first business in Gorakhpur.
Professional Career
Roy joined the struggling chit fund company Sahara Finance in 1976 and took it over. They changed their financial model in 1978. It is said that Sahara used the financial model of the much older Peerless Group. They are called Residual Non-Banking Companies (RNBCs) which accept very small amounts of deposits.
In the 1990s, Roy moved to Lucknow, which became the base for his group. From there, it grew to become India’s largest conglomerate with diverse business interests. The company now has interests in financial services, education, real estate, media, entertainment, tourism, health care and hospitality.
The Hindi-language newspaper Rashtriya Sahara was launched in 1992. In the late 1990s, the ambitious Aamby Valley City project was launched near Pune. Sahara TV was launched in 2000 and was later renamed Sahara One. In 2003, Sahara launched three weeklies: Sahara Samay (English), Sahara Samay (Hindi) and Sahara Alami (Urdu).
In 2010, Sahara purchased the prestigious Grosvenor House Hotel in London, and 2012, the historic Plaza Hotel and Dream Downtown Hotel in New York City.
Sahara has a workforce of approximately 1.2 million including salaried employees, consultants, field staff, agents, business associates etc. In 2004, Time magazine described Sahara Group as the “second largest employer in India” after the government-run Indian Express Railway.
Sahara is said to have over 9 crore investors and depositors, representing about 13% of all households in India.
Roy was planning to enter online education (Edunguru) in India, targeting small towns and villages. He formed a team that included members from top universities and colleges from all over India and even abroad. A route map of the program was drawn up and 14,000 hours of lectures were developed.
In June 2019, Roy announced its entry into the automobile sector under the brand name ‘Sahara Evoles’. The Sahara Evoles venture will offer a wide range of Electric Vehicles (EVs) along with advanced associated services.
Legal Issues
On 26 February 2014, the Supreme Court of India ordered Roy’s detention for failing to appear before it in connection with a legal dispute with the market regulator – SEBI. In a statement after his arrest, his lawyer said that Roy’s 92-year-old mother was ill and needed her “elder son”, so he failed to appear in court. Since he failed to appear in court during the ongoing legal battle, Roy was kept in custody in Delhi’s Tihar Jail and was out on parole since May 2016. Sahara was allowed to sell a part of its assets in India to increase its stake. The money in question.
Roy rejected allegations of misconduct and accused the Indian National Congress of witchcraft due to its opposition to Sonia Gandhi becoming the country’s Prime Minister.
He was initially granted interim bail by the Supreme Court on 26 March 2014 on the condition of depositing ₹10,000 crore with market regulator SEBI. His ₹10,000 crore was not deposited. As of August 2014, Roy was trying to sell some of his hotel properties to raise sufficient funds. Roy was first granted bail for four weeks in May 2017 to perform the last rites of his deceased mother, which was later extended till October 24. Since then he has been successful in getting his bail increased on various grounds. As of 31 January 2019, Sahara still had to pay ₹10,621 crore to meet its total liabilities.
Roy claimed that the company’s fundamentals are strong and the value of assets is 3 to 5 times more than liabilities. Sahara has also collected ₹22,500 crore which will be returned to Sahara India in due course as it has already paid 95% of its investors.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has paid out only ₹64 crore to investors since 2012. It is also reported that Sahara has paid ₹725.97 crore as TDS (tax deducted at source) on interest to the Income Tax Department. Between 2009–2010 and 2012–2013, investors got back 95% of the money invested. The Income Tax authorities had found that the beneficiary investors existed and accordingly confirmed the repayments made in those particular years. One of Sahara’s arguments in the top court revolves around the fact that if one government entity has found investors, why can’t another government do the same?
On 28 August 2020, two petitions were filed in the Bihar District Court against the release of the Netflix documentary Bad Boy Billionaires: India. Bihar Court passes interim stay order on a petition filed by Roy against the release of a documentary on the Netflix platform. Following the Bihar Court’s stay order, Netflix threatened to approach the Supreme Court against the court’s order to stay the documentary release.
On 5 October 2020, Netflix released three of the four films in the anthology, starring Vijay Mallya (“The King of Good Times”), Nirav Modi (“Diamonds Are Not Forever”) and Subrata Roy (“The World’s Biggest Family”), while the final episode about Ramalinga Raju is surrounded by legal injunction and is yet to be released as of December 2020.
Human Effort
In 2013, Sahara contributed to relief efforts in the flood-affected Uttarakhand region by providing one lakh bottles of drinking water, packaged juices and food packets as well as candles and matchboxes. There were 25 medical health unit vans equipped with doctors and free medicines and it was said by the group that they would contribute to the rehabilitation program by building 10,000 pre-fabricated houses.
After the Kargil war, Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee praised Sahara India for providing financial assistance to the families of 127 martyrs.
Hotel Sahara Star in Mumbai collaborated with Feeding India in 2021. As a part of its CSR initiative, the hotel provides food to hungry people.
Death
Roy died at the age of 75 on 14 November 2023 due to cardiorespiratory arrest after a long battle with complications arising from metabolic malignancy, hypertension and diabetes. Subrata Roy was admitted to Mumbai’s Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital and Medical Research Institute on Sunday following a decline in health.
Awards and Honors
Subrata Roy received an Honorary Doctorate in Business Leadership from the University of East London in 2013, received the Business Icon of the Year award at the Powerbrands Hall of Fame Awards in London in 2011, and was ITA – TV Icon of the Year in 2007, and Global Leadership Award 2004.
Roy has received the Businessman of the Year Award in 2002, the Best Industrialist Award in 2002, the prestigious Rashtriya Udaan Samman (2010) by one of India’s top publishing houses, the Vocational Award for Excellence (2010) by Rotary International and Karmaveer Samman (2010) by Rotary International. (1995), Udyam Shree (1994), Baba-e-Rozgar Award (1992) and National Citizen Award in 2001.
Roy was awarded the General Jury Prize and the honorary degree of D.Litt by the Indian Television Academy Awards by Lalit Narayan Mithila University, Darbhanga.
Roy has regularly featured in India Today’s list of the 50 most powerful people in India since 2003 and was named the 10th most influential businessman in 2012.
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