Robert Chandran

Robert Viswanathan Chandran (31 May 1950 – 7 January 2008) was an Indian-born Singaporean business executive, and the founder and CEO of the Chemoil company.

Early life and education Chandran was born in 1950 in Mumbai, India to a chemist father. Due to financial problems, the family moved to Coimbatore when Chandran was nine.

Chandran unsuccessfully applied to study medicine at the University of Madras but instead undertook a Master's degree in chemistry. Following the death of his mother, Chandran left India in 1972 and lived in the Philippines where he attended the Asian Institute of Management and earned his MBA. In 1976, Chandran emigrated to the United States with his Filipino-American wife Vivian.

Career Chandran first made his fortune in California, investing in real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1981, he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen, and in the same year, he founded Chemoil, a chemical and oil trading company specializing in ship-fueling.