Subrata Roy

Subrata Roy (10 June 1948 – 14 November 2023) was an Indian businessman who founded the business conglomerate Sahara India Pariwar in 1978.

Sahara India Pariwar operated a vast number of businesses, such as Aamby Valley City, Sahara Movie Studios, Air Sahara, Uttar Pradesh Wizards, and Filmy, among others.

Subrata Roy was born into a Bengali Hindu family in Araria on 10 June 1948 to Sudhir Chandra Roy and Chhabi Roy.

His father and mother came from Dhaka, Bikrampur, East Bengal (now Bangladesh) from a rich landlord family named Bhagyakul Zamindar.

Roy studied at Holy Child Institute in Kolkata and later studied mechanical engineering at Government Technical Institute, Gorakhpur.

Roy started his first business in Gorakhpur.

Roy joined Sahara Finance, a struggling company, in 1976, that ran a chit fund and took it over.

He changed its financial model in 1978.

Sahara is said to have used the financial model of much older Peerless Group.

They are termed residuary non-banking companies (RNBCs) that accept deposits of very low amounts.

In the 1990s, Roy moved to Lucknow which became the base of his group.

From there, it went on to become the largest conglomerate of India with a diversified range of business interests.

The company now has interests in financial services, education, real estate, media, entertainment, tourism, healthcare, and hospitality.

In the late 1990s, the ambitious Aamby Valley City project near Pune was initiated.

The Hindi language newspaper Rashtriya Sahara was started in 1992.

In 2000, Sahara TV was launched which was later renamed Sahara One.

In 2003, Sahara started three weeklies: Sahara Time (English), Sahara Samay (Hindi), and Sahara Aalmi (Urdu).

In 2004, the Sahara group was termed by Time magazine as "the second largest employer in India after Indian Railways".

Sahara operates through more than 5,000 establishments across India and has a workforce of around 1.2 million (field and office) under the Sahara India umbrella.

Sahara has a workforce of around 1.2 million including salaried employees, consultants, field workers, agents, and business associates, etc. In 2004, Sahara group was termed by Time magazine as "the second-largest employer in India" after the Government-run Indian Railways.

Sahara is said to have nine crore plus investors and depositors, representing about 13% of all households in India.

Roy was planning to foray into online education (Edunguru) in India, which was targeted at small towns and villages.

He put a team in place which consists of members from top universities and colleges across India, and even abroad.

The route map of the program was prepared, and 14,000 hours of lectures were developed for this.

In 2010, Sahara purchased the iconic Grosvenor House Hotel in London, and then in 2012 the historic Plaza Hotel and Dream Downtown Hotel in New York City.

Roy was named the tenth-most influential Indian businessman in 2012 by India Today.

On 26 February 2014, the Supreme Court of India ordered the detention of Roy for failing to appear before it in connection with legal dispute with Market Regulator – SEBI.

In a statement after the arrest, his lawyer said Roy's 92-year-old mother was in poor health and needed "her eldest son" by her side, and hence he failed to appear at the court.

Initially he was granted interim bail by the Supreme Court on 26 March 2014 on condition of depositing ₹10000 crore to the market regulator SEBI.

His deposit of ₹10,000 crore was not made.

As of August 2014, Roy was trying to sell some of his hotel properties to raise enough money.

As he failed to appear in the court during the ongoing legal battle, Roy was held in custody in the Tihar Jail, Delhi and was out on parole since May 2016.

Sahara was allowed to sell a part of its assets in India to raise part of the money in question.

Roy rejected allegations of misconduct and accused the Indian National Congress of a witch hunt due to his opposition to Sonia Gandhi becoming the country's prime minister.

Roy was granted his first bail in May 2017 for four weeks to perform the last rites for his deceased mother, later extended to 24 October.

From that time on he was successful in getting his bail extended on various grounds.

In June 2019, Roy announced his foray into the automobile sector under the brand name 'Sahara Evols'.

The Sahara Evols venture will offer a wide range of electric vehicles (EVs) along with advanced allied services.

As of 31 January 2019, Sahara still had to pay ₹10,621 crore to meet its total liability.

Roy claimed that the company's fundamentals were intact and assets were greater (3 to 5 times) than the liabilities.