Rajan Pillai

Rajan Pillai (1947–7 July 1995) was an Indian businessman, popularly known as the 'Biscuit Baron'. He died in custody four days after his arrest, and the subsequent investigations led to jail reforms.

Rajan Pillai was born in Kerala, India in 1947, the son of a trader in cashews. Pillai qualified as an engineer from TKM College, Kollam.

Early in his career, he invested in a five-star hotel project in Goa. In the mid-1970s, Rajan Pillai set up his base in Singapore with 20th Century Foods packaging potato chips and peanuts. He collaborated with Canadian businessman F. Ross Johnson, head of the giant American food corporation Standard Brands. In 1984, Johnson sent him to London to head the newly acquired Nabisco Commodities. Soon after, Johnson took over of the Asian subsidiaries of Huntley & Palmer, the British biscuit manufacturing company which controlled Britannia Industries, India's largest bakery and biscuit-making concern, and handed its entire area of operation in Asia to Pillai. Pillai became known in India as the 'Biscuit King' or 'Biscuit Baron'.

He took over Nabisco's other Asian subsidiaries. Pillai then established links with Boussois-Souchon-Neuvesel (BSN), the French food company, and by 1989 controlled six Asian companies worth over $400m.

Even though he claimed to own Britannia Industries, he actually controlled only 3 per cent of its equity; the rest of his businesses were a complex interwoven and interdependent financial mesh. In 1993, owing to debt, Pillai began selling off his companies to financial institutions. The Wadia Group acquired a stake in Associated Biscuits International (ABIL), and became an equal partner with Groupe Danone in Britannia Industries Limited. In what The Economic Times referred to as one of [India's] most dramatic corporate sagas, Pillai ceded control to Wadia and Danone after a bitter boardroom struggle. Pillai's mentor, Johnson, demanded the return of $30m which he had advanced Pillai to buy Britannia. Singapore's Commercial Affairs Department, which was investigating Pillai's business deals, completed its investigation in March 1993 and charged Pillai on 22 counts of breach of trust and fraud and running up a debt of $17.2 million. As a court prepared to pronounce a 14-year prison term on him, Pillai fled his Singapore base to India in 1995.

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