Kalanithi Maran’s Sun TV Network today won the Hyderabad franchise of the Indian Premier League (IPL) for an amount of Rs 85.05 crore per year, putting an end to the process of finding a new team in the wake of the controversial termination of cash-strapped Deccan Chargers.
The IPL Governing Council met here today to open the bids for the new IPL franchise and Sun TV was found to have the highest bid amount.
“SUN TV Network have won the Hyderabad Franchise for an amount of Rs 85.05 crore per year. This Franchise fee represents a premium of over a 100 % above the amount paid by DCHL for the Hyderabad Franchise in 2008,” BCCI Secretary Sanjay Jagdale said in a release.
“The SUN TV Network bid was substantially higher than the second bid of PVP Ventures, which was Rs 69.03 crore,” Jagdale said.
The BCCI had floated the tenders for a new IPL franchise after terminating Deccan Chargers’ contract on September 15 but the team owners DCHL had challenged it at the Bombay High Court.
The High Court had ruled in favour of the BCCI after Deccan Chargers Holdings Limited failed to furnish bank guarantee of Rs 100 crore before October 12 5pm deadline. Later, an arbitrator had ordered for status quo but the High Court again ruled in favour of the Board.
DCHL then approached the Supreme Court which, however, declined on October 19 to interfere with the High Court decision which had set aside the status quo order passed by the arbitrator.
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New IPL Hyderabad team owner Kalanithi Maran: From student leader to tycoon
Kalanithi Maran, owner of USD 2.8 billion (appx Rs 15,000 crores) Sun Group which today won the Hyderabad franchise of the Indian Premier League, has come a long way from being a student leader in prestigious Loyola College to turning into South India’s biggest media baron.
The 48-year-old Kalanithi Maran, who is the son of former Union Minister for Commerce Murasoli Maran and elder brother of former union textiles minister Dayanidhi Maran was the chairman of Loyola college’s student wing which had taken up the cause of Tamil people based in Sri Lanka in mid 80’s.
As per Forbes.com, Kalanithi is currently 24th in the list of the richest Indians — a list that includes big names like Ambani brothers Mukesh and Anil, steel baron Lakshmi Mittal, Azeem Premji, Adi Godrej, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Rahul Bajaj to name a few.
An MBA from the University of Scranton (Pennsylvania), the media moghul from South has diverse business interest from owning TV channels to having a sizeable stake in SpiceJet airlines as well venturing into DTH service and couple of Tamil newspapers (Dinakaran & Tamil Murasu).
He is also the owner of multilingual FM channel (93.5 Red FM) as well Tamil FM channel (Suryan FM). His company is also into Tamil movie production as Tollywood is one of the biggest film industry in the world.
Kalanithi is learnt to have increased his stakes in SpiceJet to about 48 percent.
While he started the Sun TV back in April 14, 1993 with a modest bank loan of USD 86,000, exactly 10 years and 10 days after the launch on April 24, 2006 — the company was listed in Bomaby Stock Exchange upon raising USD 133 million.
