Patriarch of India's Tata Group dies at 86

Former chairman Ratan Tata’s business moves helped put country on world stage

- Nirmala Ganapathy

NEW DELHI - The 156-year-old Tata Group makes tea, soap and cars, operates luxury hotels, offers topof-the-line software services and brought Starbucks to India.

The death at the age of 86 of Mr Ratan Tata, who fuelled the group's expansion and remained its face as chairman emeritus, was a moment of national grief and reflection.

Mr Tata, who was the former chairman of the Tata Group, died in Mumbai on Oct 9. He had been admitted to hospital due to age-related issues on Oct 7.

Hundreds of people, from common folk to political and business leaders, along with Bollywood actors, gathered to pay their last respects to Mr Tata, whose last rites were carried out with full state honours in Mumbai on Oct 10.

The soft-spoken bachelor, who comes from the Parsi community, was widely admired for his humility and grace, and his death is seen as the end of an era of corporate leadership.

"He was the last of a generation of aristocratic businessmen who believed in the importance of ethically carried out business. This is a legacy he inherited from his forefathers," Ms Coomi Kapoor, contributing editor of The Indian Express newspaper, told The Straits Times.

"He was a role model for many, and not just business people. Even if people occasionally cast stones at him, his reputation was strong enough to contain that." He took over as Tata Group chairman from his uncle J.R.D. Tata, another icon of Indian business, in 1991, just as India was liberalising and opening up its economy.

He never married and had no children.