Chandigarh: Ending all speculation about Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo Arvind Kejriwal entering Parliament through a vacant seat in the Rajya Sabha, the party announced businessman Rajinder Gupta as its choice for the Upper House Sunday.
A Padma Shri awardee, 66-year-old Gupta is the founder and chairman emeritus of the Trident Group, a global leader in terry towel and home textiles, which has diversified into paper, chemicals and energy. Gupta resigned as vice chairman of the Punjab State Economy and Planning Board Saturday.
He will replace Sanjeev Arora, a Ludhiana-based businessman who was nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the AAP in 2022. Arora was pulled out by the party this year to contest the Ludhiana West assembly by-election. After Arora’s victory, speculation had been rife that Kejriwal himself would enter Parliament on the Rajya Sabha seat. Kejriwal had denied the rumours, saying that their Rajya Sabha candidate would be from Punjab itself.
A first-generation entrepreneur who started his earliest venture from his hometown in Barnala in the mid-1980s, Gupta has remained close to those in power in the state over the years—both the Akalis and the Congress.
Gupta told Forbes in an interview last year that the Punjab government had backed his venture in its early years of struggle, while trying to promote businesses during the difficult days of militancy in the state.
Hailing from a humble background, Gupta dropped out of school to work in a factory. His earliest venture, Abhishek Industries, set up in 1985, was a fertiliser manufacturing plant. In 1991, he started his first spindle yarn factory in Barnala, and in the next 20 years, Gupta put Abhishek Industries on the world map. In 2005, he received the Udyog Ratan, and two years later, he received the Padma Shri. He renamed his company Trident Industries in 2011, having diversified from fertilisers to yarn, paper and chemicals.
Forbes reported last year that Trident Group’s revenue “pole-vaulted from Rs 712.23 crore in FY05 to a staggering Rs 6,790.3 crore in FY24, a 9x jump in 19 years”. Trident is among the world’s top five terry towel and wheat straw paper manufacturers, with an export footprint in almost 150 countries. With a net worth of $1.3 billion, Gupta is ranked 2,801 on Forbes‘ global list of billionaires.
Now headquartered in Ludhiana, the Trident Group has two manufacturing facilities in Barnala. In 2014, Gupta had chosen to move his next venture out of Punjab, opening the world’s largest terry towel plant in Madhya Pradesh’s Budni, the assembly constituency of Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Chief minister at the time, Chouhan had inaugurated the facility.
Gupta had stepped down as the chairman of the company in 2022, citing health reasons. His son Abhishek now leads the business. Cricketer Kapil Dev is an independent director in the company. Gupta’s daughter Neha is married to Ishaan Bector, grandson of Padma Shri awardee Rajni Bector, whose food brand Cremica is a household name.
Rags-to-riches story
Close aides revealed that Gupta’s rags-to-riches story was made possible with the active help of Punjab’s most powerful politicians, with whom he has maintained close relations.
He was a familiar face in power circles during the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance’s 10 years in power in Punjab from 2007 to 2017. He was considered particularly close to SAD party head and then deputy chief minister, Sukhbir Badal.
Badal was instrumental in bringing Gupta on to the state planning board in 2012, a position he continued to hold during Congress’s rule under Captain Amarinder Singh.
In July 2022, within a few months of the AAP coming to power, Gupta was appointed vice chairman of the Economic Policy and Planning Board for three years. His term was extended by another three years in June this year.
The board, chaired by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, is tasked with formulating strategic economic policies, assessing long-term growth plans, and providing expert advice to the state government on matters concerning development and resource allocation.
In June 2022, Gupta took over as head of management of the famous Patiala-based Kali Bari Temple, a post he resigned from Saturday.
Gupta has previously served as head of the board of governors of Punjab Engineering College (Deemed University) in Chandigarh, and as President of the Punjab Cricket Association. He was also chairman of the advisory council for Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh for the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in 2013.
In 2017, as vice-chairman of the planning board, he helped the then chief minister Capt Amarinder draft a proposal for special incentives for women entrepreneurs at the global entrepreneurship summit. The same year, Gupta also authored Punjab’s start-up and entrepreneurship development policy.
Gupta is the founding member of the International Leadership Board, a dedicated group of global leaders with a shared goal of advancing educational and research initiatives at the world-famous Cleveland Clinic.
In 2012, Gupta initiated talks with the US-based clinic to set up a hospital in Punjab, for which he persuaded Badal to give 50 acres of land. But the project hasn’t seen the light of day.
In October 2023, as part of a nationwide search involving multiple companies, the Trident Group facilities were raided by income tax authorities.
Despite limited access to education in his younger years, Gupta went on to do an Advanced Management Program from Harvard Business School. He also holds a degree in Management from Oxford University and has attended the Entrepreneurial Development Program at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)