Indian industrialist Rahul Bajaj dies at 83

Veteran industrialist Rahul Bajaj, whose title was synonymous with freeway transport in India, died Saturday aged 83, his agency talked about.

He “had not been holding nicely”, the Bajaj Group talked about in a press launch, together with he may be cremated on Sunday in Pune, western India.

Bajaj was born into the Indian elite — his grandfather was one amongst Mahatma Gandhi’s closest aides.

He led the eponymous family-owned conglomerate for better than 40 years, and was best acknowledged for overseeing the stratospheric success of the Bajaj Chetak scooter throughout the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s.

The sturdy and fairly priced automobile — based on a design by Italy’s Vespa and named after the legendary horse ridden into battle by a Hindu Rajput king throughout the 1500s — turned wildly in type with the Indian middle class following its 1972 launch.

However throughout the carefully regulated monetary system of the time the company was solely allowed to make 6,000 fashions a yr, foremost at one stage to a 10-year prepared itemizing.

Bajaj was considered comparatively clear in a country the place corruption is widespread.

After stepping down as head of the company in 2005, he served a time interval throughout the greater residence of the Indian parliament, for the Congress event.

He was unusually outspoken for an Indian billionaire, plenty of whom search to avoid battle with the authorities.

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Celebration obtained right here to vitality in 2014, Bajaj talked about industrialists feared criticising the federal authorities no matter a plunging improvement cost and weak monetary system.

“If we criticise you there isn’t a confidence that you’ll respect that,” Bajaj had reportedly talked about at a personal event in 2019 throughout the presence of dwelling minister Amit Shah.

Final yr, he expressed points over the impression of strict lockdowns imposed by the federal authorities to curb the unfold of the coronavirus.

However Modi tweeted on Saturday that he was “pained” by Bajaj’s demise, together with that he may be remembered for his “noteworthy contributions to the world of commerce and trade” and was a “nice conversationalist”.

Fellow industrialists paid tribute, with Harsh Goenka, chairman of conglomerate RPG Group, tweeting: “The ‘backbone’ of Indian enterprise cracks.”

Bajaj, he added, “was a visionary, straight speaking and really revered for his worth techniques. An period ends!”

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the billionaire founding father of Indian biotechnology agency Biocon, talked about the nation had “misplaced an important son & nation builder”.

“I’m devastated – he was an expensive expensive good friend and can miss him dearly,” she tweeted.

Bajaj was born on June 10, 1938 throughout the jap Indian metropolis of Kolkata.

After discovering out economics in New Delhi and laws in Mumbai, he took an MBA from Harvard Enterprise Faculty in 1964 sooner than changing into a member of the family enterprise in Pune a yr later.

The conglomerate was minimize up into separate fashions throughout the 2000s following a family dispute.

However Bajaj Auto is now among the many many world’s prime 10 motorcycle-makers, and first in three-wheelers, with a 72 % market share according to Autocarpro.

“Rahul Bajaj’s passing is an enormous loss to India,” tweeted Rahul Gandhi, the de facto head of Congress, now the precept opposition event.

“Now we have misplaced a visionary whose braveness made us proud.” (AFP)