Chandra Bs Entrepreneur Of The Year

Subhash Chandra, the chairman of Zee Telefilms,and the man who embodies the concept of convergence or ICE, having successfully used technological convergence to bring together the Information, Communications, and Entertainment (ICE) sectors, has been named the Business Standard Entrepreneur of the Year for 1999.

Chandra is an entrepreneur with uncommon insight who has made bold moves in information by offering cable-based Internet access, in communications by building Agrani _ a satellite-based telephony system _ and in entertainment through Siti Cable, Zee TV and other regional channels.

His strategic thinking has made Zee the most complete entertainment and information company in India.

 

As the man himself says, "Convergence has moved from the threshold to the forefront and will be the buzzword in the coming decade, for it will change consumption patterns."

The BS 1,000 issue not only tracks these trends but also encapsulates the performance of India's corporate giants, as they stand poised on the threshold of a new era _ the ICE Age.

The three pillars of the new economy _ Information, Communications and Entertainment _were conceptualised by Business Standard in its BS ICE Index.

Though India's ICE companies are still diminutive compared with their counterparts in asset-intensive industries in terms of sales, their supremacy can be gauged from the Super Rank - a Business Standard composite index made on the basis of profitability, growth and other key ratios, where four of the top five are ICE companies _ Infosys, Zee Telefilms, Satyam Computer and VSNL. Even on the stock market the top three firms, market capitalisation-wise, were from the ICE sector: Wipro, Zee and Infosys, overtaking giants like Hindustan Lever, ONGC and Reliance. In terms of returns, too, ICE sector stocks were the best-performing.