C. Sivasankaran: the price warrior who failed to price in his own risks

Born on 29 July 1956, in Tamil Nadu, Sivasankaran grew up with few advantages beyond ambition. He began as a fabrication contractor for Madras Refineries Limited (now Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited), a grease-stained start far removed from the presidential suites he would later inhabit.

In person, Siva was a bundle of energy — shifting effortlessly between Tamil and boardroom English, sporting gold Rolexes and Montblanc pens without affectation.

In 1992, he secured a five-year Yellow Pages contract from MTNL — a quiet beachhead into telecom. In 1998, he launched DishnetDSL, the country’s first DSL internet provider, and in March 2004 sold its internet division to the Tata-owned VSNL.

That transaction brought him close to Ratan Tata and forged a friendship that would prove one of the more quietly remarkable relationships in Indian corporate life.

Around the same time, he displayed his dealmaking instincts by obtaining cellular licences for Delhi and three other circles and flipping them to Shashi Ruia of Essar for $105 million.

Then came Aircel. Founded in 1999 on a disruptionist pricing philosophy, it became one of India’s fastest-growing telecom brands, eventually spanning 22 circles.

In 2006, Siva sold a 74% stake to Malaysia’s Maxis Communications for more than a billion dollars. Paradoxically, it marked the beginning of his troubles.

He later alleged that Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran had stonewalled Aircel’s licence applications until the company changed hands — a claim that became one strand of the wider 2G scam inquiry.

WinWinD, his Finland-headquartered wind turbine venture, filed for bankruptcy in October 2013 after heavy losses.

Meanwhile, the CBI alleged that his companies defaulted on IDBI Bank loans worth over ₹600 crore, funds allegedly used not for their stated purposes but to repay other Siva Group companies.

A London court imposed a worldwide freeze on his assets in July 2014. He had also applied for personal bankruptcy in the Seychelles courts in 2014 to fend off claims by telecom partner Batelco of Bahrain. The Supreme Court of Seychelles ultimately cancelled that bankruptcy and ordered his assets freed to pay creditors.

His legal record is mixed.

In the Aircel-Maxis case, he was the complainant, alleging ministerial coercion, but the Special 2G Court discharged all accused in 2017.

The IDBI Bank fraud case — in which Sivasankaran is the accused — remains alive. The ED has attached over ₹224 crore of assets linked to his companies, and the CBI chargesheet names him and 24 company officials.

In 2019, he challenged a Look Out Circular, claiming diplomatic immunity as Seychelles Ambassador-at-Large. Seychelles confirmed the title but clarified that his presence in India carried no official diplomatic purpose.

The Madras High Court rejected his immunity plea in November 2019, and the Supreme Court upheld that rejection in December 2021.

Aircel itself — the company that made his fortune — filed for bankruptcy in 2018, a dispiriting end to a once-promising journey.

A genuinely gifted man who brought affordable computing and then mobile telephony to millions of Indians, Siva understood the cost-conscious Indian consumer long before bigger names did. Sadly, the same instinct for risk, the willingness to bet large, move fast and disregard conventional limits, that made him, ultimately brought about his downfall.