chennai at the stroke of 1330 hours superstar rajinikanth announced his political foray two men one well known tamil aruvi manian and the other less known r arjuna murthy flanked himsixtyyearold arjuna murthy a bsc chemistry graduate was a confidant of murasoli maran for nearly 7 years post that murthy took a business detour to mentor his daughter lakshmi deepa at yeldi softcom in creating a nearfieldcommunicationtechnologydriven payments platform negotiations with american express for a stake sale dropped at the last moment over valuation issuessince then murthy has been busy hobnobbing with central leaders of the bjp his wife and union finance minister nirmala sitaraman are classmates and this helped forge a closer bond between murthy and several senior bjp leaders before joining rajinikanths proposed political party as its chief coordinator murthy was heading the bjps state intellectual wing in fact he had joined the bjp only recentlyhe is good at grasping things and can visualise futuristic stuff sometimes they work and sometimes they dont for example he was ahead of his times at nfc as a technology it is yet to gain mass acceptance he has a knack to get the branding right political infrastructure is a different cup of tea and the scale in a large state like tamil nadu will be a mountain to climb for him a close associate who knows murthy said