Rajeev Chandrasekhar is a member of the Union Council of Ministers of Narendra Modi Govt. in India. Rajeev holds twin responsibilities as Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship in the country. He is focused on implementing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of Digital India by expanding and deepening India’s Tech and Innovation Economy, developing India as a global talent and Entrepreneurship Hub. In this regard, he is leading several initiatives such as the semi-conductor mission for India, electronics system design and manufacturing, deep tech investment promotion, Startup India and technology policy development.

A tech native, Rajeev has a bachelors in electrical engineering with a MS in computer science from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He started his engineering career in the United States working on microprocessors, compilers and Unix operating systems at Intel. In the early 1990s, he returned to India to begin his entrepreneurial journey, setting up one of India’s earliest mobile cellular network – BPL Mobile which he successfully exited to Hutchinson, now Vodafone, in 2005.

In 2006, Rajeev committed himself to long term public service. A three-term parliamentarian, he started his political career as Member of parliament in 2006 campaigning for a variety of public interest and economic growth issues, including exposing the 2G spectrum allocation scam in the telecom sector as an opposition MP, advocating for a rules based open internet, data privacy and interoperability.

Since 2014, prior to becoming a Minister, Rajeev was a member of many important Parliamentary committees including Finance and Technology amongst others Currently he is executing the Indian Govt’s mission for building a trillion-dollar tech economy in India by 2025-26 and also working towards making India a Global Skills Hub.