Subhash Chandra
Everyone knows Indians love Bollywood movies, but it's actually television that has had the biggest impact on the country over the past couple decades. TV revenues in India this year will top $5.4 billion, double the film industry's sales. And the spread of the small screen, especially satellite and cable TV with its soap operas and news channels — foreign and home-grown alike — has introduced Western values to millions of young, urban Indians keen to copy the fashions and lifestyles of their favorite stars. At the forefront of that movement is Subhash Chandra, a onetime rice trader and now head of Zee TV, India's pioneering satellite television operator. Chandra launched Zee in the early 1990s; its audience now numbers in the hundreds of millions and has helped make him a billionaire, according to Forbes magazine. Chandra's latest venture: the breakaway India Cricket League, which aims to draw fans away from International Cricket Council-sanctioned games with super-short matches and a highly-paid stable of former international stars.
—By Simon Robinson