From Corporate Employee to Real Estate Mogul: The Tragic Story of CJ Roy
A bright student and a beneficiary of the IT boom in Bengaluru, Roy Chiriankandath Joseph, or CJ Roy as he was popularly called, made his way from being a corporate employee to a real estate mogul. He built a 43-million-square-foot empire, naming his company while in a bathroom and expanding it to various sectors.
On Friday, Roy allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself at his Langford Road office in Bengaluru, when Income Tax (IT) officials were present. Income Tax sources claimed they had gone to Roy’s office to wrap up the raids that had been held earlier. They claimed this was procedural and that some of the questions he was asked had upset him.
As per the Kerala real estate regulatory authority, 20 projects by Roy’s firm are in progress in various Kerala district headquarters alone, including Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Kozhikode, Malappuram, and Thrissur.
Kerala-born Roy has been a resident of Bengaluru since childhood and studied at St Joseph’s Indian High School. Afterwards, he took up a job in BPL, which manufactured televisions at the time, and later joined TVS Electronics. Roy also worked with Hewlett-Packard, from which he resigned in 1997 to become an entrepreneur. He pursued an MBA course and started the Confident Group in 2005.
He once told an interviewer that his mother influenced him to get into real estate. In 2001, Roy bought land in Sarjapura, now an IT corridor but then an underdeveloped area that carried a value of Rs 5-6 lakh per acre. Today, the land value is about Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 per square foot. Roy started his business in Bengaluru before expanding it to Kerala and Dubai. His son takes care of the Dubai projects.
Over the past two decades, he has completed over 165 projects. Roy claimed his company was a zero-debt business model and had diversified beyond real estate into hospitality, entertainment, education, golfing, retail, and international trading.
In another interview, Roy once said he decided to name the company Confident Group, inspired by names such as Prestige and Reliance. He was sitting in the bathroom at the time. In recent years, he had been involved in the joint development of properties, where he would provide the land, and developers would execute the projects.
Outside of work, Roy is a trained magician and a luxury car aficionado. He has also produced several films, salvaging projects that were facing a crisis, and sponsored TV shows. His first production was Casanova, a big-budget film from 2012. In 2021, he was part of the production of Mohanlal-starrer Marakkar: Lion of the Arabian Sea. Last year, he produced Tovino Thomas-starrer Identity. Roy was also known as much for his luxury cars as he was for his social welfare activities.
