Ramesh Chandra, was born in 1938/40 to a banker, and spent his formative years in Farrukhabad, a town in Uttar Pradesh. After finishing his schooling here, he joined IIT Kharagpur, where he studied structural engineering.
He is married to Dr. Pushpa Chandra, and has two children — Ajay Chandra and Sanjay Chandra.
He moved into real estate and civil engineering in 1985 to build middle-class homes and completed many prestigious projects in Gurgaon, UP, and Libya, among other middle-eastern countries. His publicly traded company, the Unitech Group The company is now largely under the management of two sons — Ajay Chandra and Sanjay Chandra with latter being in charge of Unitech Wireless. In 2011, Sanjay Chandra was implicated in the 2G spectrum case and was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation. Ramesh Chandra was jailed on 11 January 2016 on charges of cheating.