‘Dishi’ Rishi poses up for latest behind-the-scenes shots from the Treasury

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‘Team Rishi’ today released new behind-the-scenes pictures taken by his personal photographer as the Tory Chancellor announced a new £4.6billion bailout for lockdown-hit firms to add to Britain’s debt mountain.

5ft 6ins Mr Sunak is seen looking mean and moody at his Downing Street office doorway clutching an iPhone before taking off his jacket to enthusiastically practice a speech in front of aides amid rumours he could extend the furlough scheme beyond April.

The pictures were taken by former Times photographer Simon Walker, who is the Treasury’s ‘digital content editor’, hired as part of Mr Sunak’s team to improve his social media output.

The Chancellor, dubbed ‘Dishy Rishi’ by some for his good looks, is seen striking a series of poses as he enters his office before gesticulating energetically, reading Government documents, chatting with aides and swiping down on his smartphone.

Rishi Sunak’s gift to his admirers with a series of moody snaps marked the unveiling of his latest multi-billion Covid rescue package for Britain as Government borrowing continued at eye-watering levels. 

Fans took to social media to hail the return of ‘Brand Rishi’ after a Christmas break – but one critic said: ‘Busy working on #brandrishi while taxpayers are treated as collateral damage’. 

Today the Chancellor declared that venues hammered by Boris Johnson’s dramatic decision will get one-off grants of up to £9,000 to keep them afloat over the next seven weeks after Boris Johnson announced a third national lockdown.

Some 600,000 premises across the UK are set to receive the cash, while another £594million is being pumped into a ‘discretionary fund’ to support other firms affected.

Despite the running costs of the coronavirus response spiking above £300billion, Mr Sunak also pointedly refused to rule out keeping the massive furlough scheme beyond the end of April, merely saying he would ‘take stock’ at the Budget in March.

However, businesses warned that the package is not enough, amid pressure for VAT and rates relief to be kept in place to stop a wave of bankruptcies.  

Mr Sunak is known for cultivating his brand under the guidance of his adviser, the former TV presenter Allegra Stratton, including by marking Treasury media releases with his personal signature. Allegra has since joined the Prime Minister’s team.

He will hope today’s package will help persuade Britons that the government has a plan to rescue the country’s economy from ruin… and to burnish his growing reputation as one of the Tory party’s brightest prospects.

The ‘Brand Rishi’ push in the past year – including his own logo – has fuelled speculation that the Chancellor could one day launch a bid for the Tory leadership.

Mr Sunak said last year that he does not want to run for the top job and insisted he was sticking to the top job at the Treasury.

‘I think the job I have is hard enough and I see up close what the Prime Minister has to deal with everyday,’ he said. 

Mr Sunak’s expensive tastes were highlighted in July when he was pictured preparing in his Treasury office for his mini-Budget with a £180 ‘smart’ coffee mug.

Yesterday he revealed he owns a £2,000 Peloton exercise bike which has a screen allowing people to take virtual classes from their home.

Asked at a virtual Tory conference event how he starts his day, Mr Sunak reportedly said: ‘I check my phone, do a news scan, then depending on how energetic I’m feeling I’ll either do treadmill, Peloton or some gym class. I do that, see my kids and then generally I’m at my desk at 7.45am.’

Mr Sunak said he ‘hates running outside’ and ‘the treadmill’s my thing’. He is married to  Akshata Murthy, the daughter of Indian IT mogul Narayana Murthy. They live with their daughters Krishna and Anoushka at home in Downing Street. 

Akshata has shares in her family’s tech firm that are worth £430million, making her one of Britain’s wealthiest women with £80million more cash than the Queen. Her father is worth an estimated £2.3billion ($3.1bn). 

Ms Murthy and her relatives hold a multimillion pound portfolio of shareholdings which have come to light amid questions over the Chancellor, who met his future wife while studying at Stanford University, California, failing to declare them in the register of ministers’ interests.

The assets make Indian-born Akshata richer than the Queen, who is estimated to be worth £350million, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. 

She is the daughter of one of the richest men in India – billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy – who has been described as the father of the Indian IT sector and ‘one of the 12 greatest businessmen of all time’. 

Sunak is the son of a GP father and pharmacist mother who emigrated to Southampton from East Africa in the 1960s, and he studied at Oxford University before winning a Fulbright scholarship to Stanford where the future husband and wife met.  

The latest revelation comes after Sunak faced demands to reveal details of his financial interests last month, after it emerged he set up a ‘blind trust’ when he was made Chief Secretary to the Treasury in July last year.

But critics said there was still risk of conflict as Sunak – reputed to be the richest MP – is aware what he put into the trust.

Mr Sunak’s wife is the daughter of an entrepreneur in India, co-founding technology company Infosys – in which she owns 0.91 per cent shares, totalling £430million. 

Her family are also have a joint venture with Amazon worth £900million a year and shares in the firm running Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Italian and burger chain Wendy’s in India. 

Before becoming Chancellor, Sunak was better known in India than he was in Britain, after he became a household name when he married Akshata, the daughter of a self-made billionaire. 

Akshata’s father is the 51st richest man in India and ranks at 1135 in the world’s billionaire list, according to Forbes. 

The father-of-two from Bangalore, India, graduated with a science Master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology before becoming the co-founder and chairman of Infosys. 

He spent 30 years at the company before resigning in 2011, coming back in 2013 to pass the management to a CEO in 2014.

The tech giant was worth around £2billion when Southampton-born Sunak travelled on a Fulbright scholarship to Stanford University in California, where he met his future wife after taking Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford.

It is today valued at around £33.3billion, with Mr Murphy’s real-time net worth estimated at around £2.3billion ($3.1bn) at the time of writing. 

According to his company profile, Mr Murthy, whose wife, Sudha, works as an author, is currently on the boards of Ford Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey and the United Nations Foundation.

He has also served on the boards of Cornell University, Wharton School, the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and the Rhodes Trust at Oxford, alongside Yale University’s international advisory board.

On its website, Infosys says that Mr Murthy ‘introduced the concept of the 24-hour work day to the world’.

It states: ‘Mr Murthy conceptualized, articulated and implemented the Global Delivery Model (GDM) which has become the backbone of the Indian software industry. 

‘GDM is based on collaborative distributed software development principles and has resulted in the delivery of superior quality software to global customers delivered on time and within budget. Mr Murthy also introduced the concept of the 24-hour work day to the world.

‘Under Mr. Murthy’s leadership, Infosys became the leader in innovation in technical, managerial and leadership training, software technology, quality, productivity, customer focus, employee satisfaction, and physical and technological infrastructure.’

Sunak and Akshata married in 2009 in her home city of Bangalore in a two-day ceremony attended by 1,000 guests. 

Before entering politics, Mr Sunak, who is now a multi-millionaire in his own right, studied at the £42,000-per-year Winchester College and later at Oxford University. 

During his time in business, he worked in California, India and Britain for various investment firms including Goldman Sachs. 

He later set up his own business, Theleme Partners, in 2010 with an initial fund of £536million. 

While building the hedge fund he spent a couple of days doing voluntary work for the Conservatives – which was when he decided he would like to go into politics full-time. 

Speaking about his decision to go into politics, he once explained: ‘It was my parents who motivated me, but not in a political way.

‘My dad was a GP, my mum a pharmacist, and I grew up working in their surgery; in the pharmacy; delivering medicines to people who couldn’t pick them up.

‘People would always stop and talk to me about my mum and dad, saying, ‘Oh, you’re Mrs Sunak’s son, Dr Sunak’s son.’ And then they’d have some story about how my parents had helped them, or their parents, or children, and I thought that was amazing.

‘They had done the same job in the same place for 30 years, and it was clear that they as individuals were able to have an amazing impact on the community around us, and that I found pretty inspiring. And that was my motivation for becoming an MP.’

Every year Sunak and his wife throw a summer garden party for local villagers at their magnificent Georgian £1.5million manor house in Kirby Sigston, just outside Northallerton, Yorkshire – leading to him being dubbed the ‘Maharaja of the Dales’.