Mumbai, Oct 10: Corporate leaders, politicians and celebrities joined hundreds of people on Thursday as they bid final adieu to one of India’s most respected and internationally recognised business leaders, Ratan Tata, who died aged 86.
Last rites were performed at Mumbai’s Worli Crematorium with full state honours in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, his cabinet colleague Piyush Goyal, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, his deputy Devendra Fadnavis, and Congress leader and former chief minister Sushilkumar Shinde.
Family and friends as well as top officials of Tata group joined the ceremony where Mumbai Police paid tribute to Tata with a gun salute.
Tata, the former Tata Group chairman who transformed a staid group into India’s largest and most influential conglomerate with a string of eye-catching deals breathed his last at south Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital at 11.30 pm on October 9.
Maharashtra as well as half a dozen other states declared one-day mourning while some official programmes, including a scheduled press conference by Goyal on his US visit, were cancelled in his honour.
Tata Group’s flagship IT firm, TCS went ahead with holding its pre-scheduled meeting to approve financial results for the quarter ending September but cancelled a post-earning press conference.
Ratan Tata’s body was on Thursday morning taken in a hearse, decked with white flowers, from his home to the NCPA in south Mumbai where it would be kept for people to pay their last respects. Draped in the Indian national flag, his body was kept at a cultural centre.
The last rites were performed as per the Parsi tradition, one of the priests present at the crematorium said.
After the funeral, there will be three more days of rituals which will be conducted at the late industrialist’s bungalow in Colaba, he said.
While several politicians and celebrities made a beeline to pay their last respects, billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who was among the first to reach Breach Candy Hospital on Wednesday night, led India Inc. He reached NCPA with his wife Nita as well as his children Akash and Isha and their spouses to pay last respect to the veteran industrialist.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das, Aditya Birla group head Kumar Mangalam Birla, veteran banker Deepak Parekh as well as NCP president Sharad Pawar and his daughter Supriya Sule, and MNS chief Raj Thackeray were among those who paid their last respect.
Known for his exemplary business acumen and philanthropic nature, Tata had led the salt-to-software conglomerate for more than two decades during which the group grew more than 70 times. The Tata conglomerate had revenue of USD 165 billion in 2023-24.
As chairman for more than two decades, he took the staid group global, clinching eye-catching deals, including iconic British assets like steelmaker Corus, luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover and world’s second-largest tea company Tetley. (PTI)
