Young Businessman Kalanidhi Maran

Kalanidhi Maran

Kalanidhi Maran (Tamil: கலாநிதி மாறன்), born 1964, is the Chairman and Managing Director of Sun Network, which is the most profitable Television network in Asia.^[1][2]. In June 2010, He acquired Spice Jet which is the most profitable ^[3] airlines in India^[4][5]. His television channels and newspapers are primarliy concentrated in South India and FM radio stations, DTH service, Airlines are spread across the country.

Early life 

• Schooling at Don Bosco, Egmore, Chennai. 
• In Loyola College, Chennai he became student’s union chairman and led an agitation on the Sri Lankan Tamils issue.
• Received MBA from the University of Scranton. 
• Worked for Kungumam Tamil Magazine owned by his family in the late 1980s. 
• In 1990 he started a monthly video (VHS) news magazine in Tamil called Poomaalai which was stopped in 1992 due to piracy. 
• He Founded SunTV on April 14, 1993 with an investment of 86000 US$ from Bank loan.

Notable Achievements

• He is the 17th richest Indian with net worth of 4 Billion US$ (Rs 18000 Crores) . 
• He is the highest paid business man in India. 
• He has won Young Businessman awards from CNBC, ERNST & Young. 
• Prestigious USA based Forbes magazine named him as "Television king of southern India". 
• He was also among the few representatives at a roundtable with visiting U.S. President Bill Clinton. 
• Sun TV was listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange on April 24, 2006.

Business entities

• Sun Network - South Indian Television Channels 
• Sun Direct DTH - Direct to Home broadcasting Service. 
• Spicejet - Airlines 
• Suryan FM - Tamil Radio 
• Red FM - MultiLingual Indian Radio 
• Sun Pictures - Tamil Movie Production house 
• Dinakaran - Tamil daily news paper 
• Tamil Murasu - Tamil evening news paper 
• Kunkumam,Mutharam,Vannathirai,Kumguma Chimizh - Tamil magazines 
• Sumangali Cable Vision(SCV) -Multi System Operators (MSO) 
• Sun 18 -to distribute its channels through cable, DTH, IPTV, HITS and MMDS.

Family
He is the son of Former Union Minister of commerce Murasoli Maran, nephew of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, and the brother of India's textile minister Dayanidhi Maran. He married Kaveri a Kannadiga in 1991 and has a daughter named Kavya (Born 1992)[3]. His wife is the Joint Managing Director of Sun network. He proved to be successful in spite of his father's political rivals ruling the state for most of the period since he entered the media business. He also emerged as No.1 in neighboring states where his competitors includes politicians and business men from those states.

Dispute with Karunanidhi's family
In May 2007 followers of Karunanidhi's son M K Azhagiri attacked Maran's newspaper office after a survey in the newspaper claimed people prefer M K Stalin over Azhagiri .Later in Dec 2008 it was claimed that dispute between Maran and Karunanidhi Families was resolved. However in 2010, a criminal case against Kalanithi Maran was filed by Azhagiri owned Cable TV distrubiton company Jak communications.