Rajeev Chandrasekhar
Former Digital Minister, India
Rajeev Chandrasekhar is a former member of PM Narendra Modi’s Council of Ministers in India. He was Minister from July 2021 to June 2024 and held multiple responsibilities as Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology; Skill Development & Entrepreneurship; Jal Shakti. His work covered executing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of Digital India, expansion and deepening of India’s tech and innovation economy, and developing India as a global talent and entrepreneurship hub.
Rajeev’s initiatives as Minister included designing the Digital Privacy framework with the Indias Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, Policies for and leading the Semiconductor Mission for India, Policies to catalyze India’s Electronics manufacturing into a presence in the Global value chain, Deep Tech and Electronics systems/products, AI, Digital Government and policy and rules for user rights and an Open, Safe & Trusted, Accountable Internet in India.
He has played a pivotal role in the development and expansion of 'India DPI’, also known previously as India Stack driving India's digitalization from Identity to Payments to Public services to Skills and transforming Governance.
India’s Digitalization has served as a visible example to the rest of the world about Tech transforming Governance and people’s Lives. Rajeev was also instrumental in formulating the 'IndiaAI Policy’, which has at its core the use of AI to solve real use cases that can transform and impact people’s lives. He has put forth the need for a global approach to ensuring AI is Safe& Trusted and pushed for an accountability framework and guardrails for all Tech as we look to a more tech-intensive future.
Rajeev started his political career in 2006 and is a three-term Parliamentarian. He is recognized as one of the leading political minds in Tech, Innovation and Governance policy making including Data privacy, AI etc and has experience of over 3 decades in Tech. He has also been a force for the fast-expanding Indian Entrepreneurship and Tech Startup ecosystem.
Rajeev earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and an MS in Computer science from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He began his Tech career as a Software Engineer building Screen Manager Software for one of India’s earliest Tech companies Softech and then in the United States, working as a Design Engineer and CPU Architect at Intel on the 80486 and Pentium microprocessors and worked on Microcomputers, early Internet, compilers, and Unix operating systems.
In the early 1990s, he returned to India to begin to build up one of India’s earliest and largest mobile cellular networks, BPL Mobile which he successfully exited at USD 1.1Billion+ as India’s first Tech Unicorn in 2005 to Hutchinson, now Vodafone. He has had a relentless entrepreneurial record having built, co-invested and exited several ventures co-investing with global names like Craig McCaw, France Telecom, AT&T, Fox/Star, Airbus, Neptune Orient Lines etc.