Ananda Krishnan

Ananda Krishnan was born in 1938 in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur's "Little India" to Tamil parents, who were Sri Lankan immigrants. He studied at Vivekananda Tamil School in Brickfields,Kuala Lumpur and furthered his studies at Victoria Institution, Kuala Lumpur. Later, as a Colombo Plan scholar, he attended the University of Melbourne, Australia for his B.A. (Honours) degree majoring in political science. During that time he boarded in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn. Following that, Krishnan obtained a Masters in Business Administration at Harvard University, graduating in 1964.

Krishnan’s first entrepreneurial venture was a Kuala Lumpur consultancy MAI Holdings. He set up Exoil Trading, which went on to purchase oil drilling concessions in various countries. Later, he moved into gambling (in Malaysia). In the early part of the 1990s, he started diversifying into the multimedia arena. Currently, he has business interests in media (Astro), satellite (MEASAT), oil and gas (Bumi Armada), telecommunications (Maxis, Aircel). He owns stakes in Tanjong Public Limited Company, an investment holding company with subsidiaries involved in power generation (Powertek), gaming (Pan Malaysian Pools), leisure (Tropical Islands and Tanjong Golden Village(TGV)), and property.

He first came to prominence by helping to organize the Live Aid concert with Bob Geldof in the mid-1980s. In the early 1990s, he began building a multimedia empire that now includes two telecommunication companies - Maxis Communications and MEASAT Broadcast Network Systems - and has three communication satellites circumnavigating the earth.He also effected the purchase of 46% of Maxis Communications, the country's largest cellular phone company, from British Telecom and AT&T for $680 million - raising his stake to 70%. 


Maxis has more than Ten million subscribers, with around 40% market share in Malaysia. Recently, Maxis has acquired Aircel, Tamil Nadu's largest cellular phone company and has spread to rest of India. Maxis is also under negotiation to buy over and expand an Indonesian cellular phone company. In an agreement between Astro and India's Sun Network, Ananda plans to produce TV channels which cater to the Indian market, especially Tamil diaspora in countries such as US and Europe. Ananda also plans to offer TV services featuring Web-based interactivity. Ananda Krishnan owns stakes in TVB.com and the Shaw Brothers movie archives.