Kalanithi Maran

Kalanithi Maran (born 24 July 1964) is an Indian billionaire media proprietor. He is the chairman and founder of Sun Group, one of India's largest media conglomerates. He owns multiple television channels, newspapers, weeklies, FM radio stations, DTH services, a movie production house (Sun Pictures) and 2 cricket teams (Sunrisers Hyderabad in the Indian Premier League and Sunrisers Eastern Cape in South Africa T20 League). He also held a major share in the Indian airline SpiceJet from 2010 to 2015.





== Career ==

Kalanithi Maran went to the United States for an MBA degree at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. He was fascinated by the amount of channels available there, whereas India still had one television channel, part of the Doordarshan monopoly. Upon completing his MBA, he returned to India in 1987 working for his family's small publishing company, which included a weekly women's magazine. In 1990, Maran started a monthly video magazine in Tamil called Poomaalai. For every copy given to a public library, about 200 pirated copies were produced. The primary market of Poomaalai was Sri Lankan Tamils who fled to Europe.