Mandar Agashe

Early life

Agashe was born on 24 May 1969 into a family of businessman Dnyaneshwar Agashe and wife Rekha Agashe (née Gogte). He and his brother, cricketer Ashutosh Agashe are the grandsons of industrialist Chandrashekhar Agashe. He also has one sister.

He was married to model turned financial planner Jiza Agashe (née Pandharkar) till 2008. They have 2 children together, including singer-songwriter Adi Agashé.

Business career

Agashe became director for three family-held businesses in 1994, Brima Finance Pvt. Ltd., Dnyaneshwar Investments, and his namesake Mandar Agashe Finance & Investments Pvt. Ltd. Between 2001 and 2012, Agashe became director for New Age Softech, Inspire Networks, Agashe Brothers Financing Co, Brihans Technologies, Brihans Natural Products, Brihans E-Commerce, EBZ Online and Codito.

Sarvatra Technologies

The Goa State Cooperative Bank Ltd. (GSCB) launched the "Any Where Money" facility on 20 November 2004. Sarvatra accounts were offered at 13 branches in all talukas of Goa initially and later extended to 64 branches spread across Goa, Daman and Diu. Later, branches of other member banks were also networked. GSCB became only the second cooperative bank in the country to implement the anywhere money facility after the Sri Suvarna Sahakari Bank in Maharashtra that year.

Suvarna Sahakari Bank scam 2008

Following the scandal his father was a part of involving the family's Suvarna Sahakari Bank, the economic offences wing (EOW) of Pune police arrested Agashe, who was the former director of the Suvarna Co-operative Bank, for his alleged involvement in the Rs 436.74-crore fraud. Deputy Commissioner of Police (EOW) Rajendra Dahale said his team had arrested Agashe, one of the 21 accused in the case. Agashe's father, who was in magisterial custody, had died of heart failure at Sassoon Hospital on 2 January 2009.

Agashe was remanded in police custody till 11 February. He had been a director of the bank between 1998-2006 and allegedly sanctioned 21 forged loan proposals totalling Rs 82.2 lakh. Adding interest, the amount had then gone up to Rs 113.69 crore. The prosecutor claimed Agashe had 19 companies and custody was required to check if his companies were original. A bail application was rejected despite him pleading that the Bombay high court had earlier granted bail to co-suspect Ashutosh Agashe.

Music career

Starting off as a rock-n-roll musician in college, Agashe launched a website called musicurry.com, when he was a student of computer engineering. He came into the music field as a co-music director with Pandit Hridayanath and sang his first playback song with Asha Bhosle. In 2003, choosing to flow from techno to trance to Indian classical, Agashe planned to go international and release a single in Germany. He worked with agent, Michael Heiss to cut deals with radio stations to air and release the single in Germany called "I Need Someone". India Times' Huned Contractor said: "It is a track that showcases a different style altogether with Mandar providing it with a laidback attitude and the smoothness of a drawl." He was into production of herbal cosmetics under the family conglomerate.

Single "Jaan Le" & album "82"

In 2005, Agashe released a music video single titles "Jaan Le" with digitally filtered vocals and macabre lyrics.

In 2016, he released a reprise effort with Asha Bhosle in the form of an album called "82", reflecting the veteran singer's age at the time of recording. Acting as music director and composer, he featured six of Suresh Bhat's never-heard-before ghazals. Bhat had given Agashe 10 of his poems prior to his death. "He had then told me that he wanted my style of music for his ghazals. He had this desire that his ghazals should be sung by Asha Bhosle in pop genre," said Agashe in a press interview.

The songs were given different treatments like Pop, Reggae, Blues, and Ballad. As a promotional tool for the album, a website was created (www.82pop.in) and it hosted a competition for fan made videos of the six songs from the album.