"It was an emotional and a rational decision," was how Rajeev Chandrasekhar chose to explain his decision to exit BPL Communications, which he set up in 1995.
This was the time when India was liberalising the telecommunication sector from the monopoly of BSNL as the country woke up to the wireless world and BPL took the positioning of "live wirefree".
From scratch, Chandrasekhar took this company to a respectable brand before selling it to the Essar-Hutch combine in a deal valued at a billion dollars.
Through this decade of building the company, Chandrasekhar fought pitched battles with various stakeholders, regulators, competing CDMA service providers and debtors to come out tough and exhausted.
He had to contend with his father-in-law TPG Nambiar, foreign financial investors and the onslaught of Reliance Infocomm.
But what hurt him and the company most was the failed merger with BATATA (the Birla-Tata-AT&T combine, now under Idea).
The 41-year-old ventured into this sector during the same time as Sunil Mittal of Bharti did but could not really match pace with Mittal and had to remain content with being the second-biggest in most of the circles BPL operated in, a direct result of the failed merger where Chandrasekhar took a backseat.
Looking back on this failed merger, Chandrasekhar declines to name the "spanner in the works" diplomatically but puts it as "other parties" that wanted to bring down the valuation of the deal.
"When we announced the merger with BATATA, the Centre announced the fourth cellular licence bids despite the low investor confidence due to WLL. Batata did bid for this fourth licence and we did not as we were sure that we will be part of this consortium. At that time, bids were low given the lack of bidders and the WLL controversy," he says.
He adds that in anticipation of the merger, BPL did not invest further in Maharashtra, a decision, which went against the company and which resulted in its market share slipping dramatically.
"Consequences were disastrous because in 2002, when the merger was cancelled, we were faced with lost market share in Maharashtra, had not raised any capital, and consequently not invested. Compounding this was the WLL controversy during that time when raising capital was difficult, which led us really to look at the path ahead," he recalls.
This, after having invested close to Rs 2,500 crore (Rs 25 billion) to expand operations, led to BPL having to face the wrath of investors who were looking at returns.
This went to such an extend that AIG and CDC sued BPL over loss of investor wealth, which led to arbitration in the UK, a case which is yet to be settled. Essar now have to see how to deal with these investors.
Given the flamboyant nature of Chandrasekhar and the never-say-die attitude, he went on to bringing sanity to operations by initiating a structured strategy to build a subscriber base in all the circles BPL was in.
At the same time, he started to look again at strategic investment options.
This is where BPL group patriarch TPG Nambiar dragged Chandrasekhar to the Company Law Board stating that he was being sidelined and he (TPG) should be consulted before selling a strategic stake. Nambiar holds close to 8 per cent stake in BPL Communications.
After a protracted legal battle, Nambiar agreed to withdraw the case against Chandrasekhar. Couple of days after this, Chandrasekhar decided to exit the business.
As for his future plans, Chandrasekhar, in a lighter vein, says, "I will take a three days' holiday and will be back to look for a job from Monday."
The man, who reportedly got around Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) plus in this exit, does not really have to do that.
"Opportunities in the buoyant economy abound and it is highly likely that he will pursue his private equity plans, something which was always close to his heart," says an industry analyst tracking the BPL family.
