Ashutosh Agashe

Ashutosh Dnyaneshwar Agashe. Agashe bears his father's name (Dnyaneshwar) as a middle name as per the patronymic Marathi naming conventions, but he is widely known without his patronymic.

From 1997 to 1999, Agashe represented his home state of Maharashtra as a member of the Maharashtra cricket team playing first-class cricket in the Ranji Trophy, having been selected for a four-day fixture for the Ranji Trophy by the Maharashtra Cricket Association in 1998, debuting as the team's captain against the Mumbai cricket team at the Wankhede Stadium in November 1999.

In 1999, Agashe further played in the Belfast Cricket League for Creevedonnell Cricket Club in Derry. He subsequently left List A cricket in 2000, and has been a life member of the Maharashtra Cricket Association.

Career in business: 2000–present Beginning in 1994, Agashe was appointed a director at Brima Finance, before joining his father on the board of directors of the Brihan Maharashtra Sugar Syndicate Ltd. in 1996. In 1998, under the leadership of Agashe and his father, the syndicate began marketing ayurvedic medicines, health care products, and bulk raw materials, manufacturing food products and veterinary medicine, promoting ayurvedic skincare products made by its sister company, Brihans Natural Products in 2000, and manufacturing alcohol-based chemicals by 2002.

In September 2000, Agashe was appointed as a joint managing director of the syndicate. In April 2002, he contributed an essay titled अजातशत्रू to his father's festschrift. In 2003, he was made a selector at the Maharashtra Cricket Association, at the time, chaired by his father, which raised nepotism concerns and drew in criticism for the association. That same year, he supported the publication of a book about Mahavira and other Jain Tirthankaras by Shantilal Bhandari.

By 2004, Agashe was also looking after several operations of the Suvarna Sahakari Bank. That same year, he was part of his father's Maharashtra Cricket Association committee as a representative for the Club of Maharashtra, and worked as his father's aide during the controversial elections at the Board of Control for Cricket in India, when his father was not allowed to vote as vice president of the board due to alleged factionalism.

In 2005, under Agashe, the syndicate entered a partnership with Howling Wolves Wine Group of Australia which planned to set up a wine production base in India. Between 2004 and 2005, he was elected the chairman of Suvarna Sahakari Bank. and served as chairman when the bank was put under moratorium by the Reserve Bank of India in 2006. In 2007, he received the DSK Group Energy Award of 2007 for corporate implementation of energy efficiency improvement measures.

In 2008, Agashe was one of the directors implicated in Suvarna Sahakari Bank's alleged scam case. Him along with his parents, aunt and brother were taken under judicial custody, during which time his father died in January 2009. He was subsequently released on bail that same month. The bank's merger with the Indian Overseas Bank was finalised by the Reserve Bank of India in May 2009.

Since 2009, Agashe has been director at Agashe Brothers Financing Company, and since 2010, director at Baumgarten and Wallia. In August 2009, he was appointed chairman and managing director of the Brihan Maharashtra Sugar Syndicate. In 2015, he conceived the Dnyaneshwar Agashe Trophy as the highest award of merit at the Poona Young Cricketers Hindu Gymkhana's annual cricket tournament, the PYC Premier League, in honour of his father. In February 2019, he came out of retirement to participate in the Poona Club Premier League.

In May 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic in India, Agashe donated oxygen concentrators to hospitals in Shreepur, Maharashtra. In July 2024, he owned a chess team for the chess league organised by the PYC Hindu Gymkhana, further owning a tennis team at the gymkhana's tennis tournament in December 2024, with that same team going on to play table tennis, tennis, and badminton in the gymkhana's racquet sport league in March 2025.

Published works Essays