Subrata Roy was born into a middle-class family, and initially he used to sell snacks on the bike from village to village. While working, he had an opportunity to work with various people and his customers who frequently ate his snacks. Most of them were poor and unorganized. Subrata Roy had found his purpose while selling snacks. He decided to start a finance business by providing extra interest on the saved money. He started promoting and all the poor people identified him as a finance giver. This word of mouth became so popular that he started his own company, the Sahara group.
As time passed, almost 13 crore population, which is 11% of India, collaborated and invested in the Sahara group. The business was successfully running and eventually he entered real estate, hotel and hospitality industry, health, media and entertainment, IPL and sports. There was a time when Sahara used to provide the highest number of job opportunities after railways. That's the status Sahara group used to hold, Subrata Roy was also into social service and politics and had vast empire of wealth.
The Bad Phase.
Every story has ups and downs. The real chaos began when the Sahara group was under income tax radar. The search operations were conducted in 1996 but, due to his connections and circles, he was saved and the officer was transferred. The company began to fall apart from every sector slowly, investors stopped investing due to allegations and the biggest came when Sahara decided to list his company on the stock markets and wanted to raise an IPO. The SEBI regulatory institution identified many loopholes in the documents of the Sahara, through OFCD, they manipulated the regulation by asking them to invest more in the Sahara group by crossing the limits.
The only problem which was created was that Sahara did not follow the guidelines and permits required. The data provided to SEBI were manipulated, and the documents were missing proper information. This led to legal conflict. The supreme court and SEBI took it as money laundering and arrested Subrata Roy. Further asked the Sahara group to repay everything with an interest rate of 15% in 3 months. The first installment was paid and later the next installments were delayed. The Sahara group claims they have paid almost 22,000 crore but SEBI denies, saying they do not have legal papers of Sahara group. .
