[2] Owing to his family's poverty and his mother's illness, he discontinued his education at the age of nine, initially selling milk and later working as a labourer on the sugarcane fields at Cornelia Ida, where his jobs included weeding, cutting, loading, and manually fertilising the fields with manure.
Sankar subsequently went into partnership with his brother and nephew, purchasing uncleared land between Dunkeld and Perth.
[3] Despite initial failures, in 1966 Sankar was able to purchase 1,556 acres (6.30 km2) at Hamptoncourtpolder with his first rice crop harvested two years later.
[10] The couple, who lived apart for the first two years of their marriage, had two daughters, Sita and Sattie, and a son, Beni, who played first-class cricket for Essequibo and later took over the running of KSG.
[2][11] Sankar was a devout Sanātanī Hindu throughout his life, and paid for several overseas swamis to visit Guyana.