Chandrashekhar Govind Agashe[a] (14 February 1888 – 9 June 1956) was an Indian industrialist and lawyer, best remembered as the founder of the Brihan Maharashtra Sugar Syndicate Ltd.

The family was traditionally occupied as the savkars (money lenders/bankers) and pseudo-hereditary chief justiciars under the Pantsachiv Kings of the Kingdom, and thus owned majority of the land in the village as vassals to the Pantsachiv rulers, where they continued the traditional family businesses of money lending and tenanted farming.

[5] Agashe's father, when serving as the chief justiciar, was the only Brahmin savkar at the royal court of Bhor at the time of his birth.

The loss of the family's estate, made Agashe accept secretarial work at the Indian Post Office to support himself and his siblings through school.

[15] From 1914 to 1917, Agashe taught mathematics at the Nutan Marathi Vidyalaya in Pune, after which he was occupied as a visiting professor at a convent school in Karachi.

[17][18] Agashe encountered political unrest between the commoners and the gentry at the Pantsachiv's court resulting in violent rioting from the common-folk of the Bhor State.

[21] Agashe supported several Indian freedom fighters, including Lokmanya Tilak and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, but never considered entering politics himself; his younger brother, Narayan Agashe III actively participated in politics surrounding the Indian independence movement, serving a brief prison time for rioting against the British Raj in the early 1930s, before aiding his elder brother in his business venture.

Several legislations Agashe helped bring forth in favour of the commoners were opposed by the gentry,[26] resulting in growing involvement from the Deccan States Agency.

[30] In the same address, Agashe also encouraged the Deccan States Agency to name the bridge over the Nira River in Bhor after the 11th Raja's extant second wife, Rani Laxmibai.

[33] That same month, Agashe served as one of the pleaders who declared the 11th Raja's resolution to accede the Bhor State into the Dominion of India as progressive and liberal in nature.

[22] Earlier in 1933, the Governor of Bombay, The Lord Brabourne promoted the production of indigenous sugar, having had increased the import tax on the commodity shipping in from Mauritius.

[34] This enabled Agashe to found the Brihan Maharashtra Sugar Syndicate Ltd. on 21 September 1934,[35][36] as a limited liability company after two years of crowd-funding campaigns,[15] with funds collected from among the Maharashtrian middle classes.

[37][34] Prior to the syndicate's establishment, Agashe had aided Atmaram Raoji Bhat in the establishment of the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce in March 1934; and further guided the Chamber to pass legislation along with the Government of Mumbai for mandatory government aid for all Maharashtrian factory based businesses.

[39] Between 1934 and 1936, Agashe envisioned opening a factory branch of the Syndicate in his hometown of Bhor, and began cultivating 2,000 acres of land for the plantation of sugar cane.

[43] In November 1937, Agashe ordered sugar cane processing machinery from Škoda Works in Czechoslovakia before the outbreak of World War II.

[48] In 1943, the Bombay Presidency decreed the plantation of Food Crops as mandatory for private sugar manufacturers to support British troops during World War II.

[50] After Gandhi's assassination by Nathuram Godse in January 1948, Agashe nor the syndicate were victimized or vandalized in the immediate aftermath of riots against Brahmin houses and businesses.

This was backlash from several scandals and court cases involving Agashe or the syndicate in allegations of duping shareholders and depositors in the early 1950s.

[58][59][60] On 9 June 1956, while on a spiritual retreat in Jogeshwari, Agashe began showing symptoms of myocardial infarction and was recommended by his doctor to return home.

[70] In September 1945, he was one of the founding members of the Maharashtra Technical Education Society, where he was a patron and gave considerable financial endowments toward the establishment of the Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli in 1947.

[92] In 1993/94, the Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce celebrated its golden jubilee by commissioning the Chandrashekhar Govind Agashe Business Motivation, Training and Research Centre (CGA – BMTRC) in his honor, which was inaugurated in August 1998.