Ratan Tata's demise is an end to a glorious era when businessman worked in favour of the mankind instead of their personal motives. At the age of 86, Ratan Tata passed away in a Mumbai hospital. He devoted his life to mankind, worked and enquired companies that could together bring a change in the world. However, his sudden death left everyone in shock.
While we know Ratan Tata and the legacy he left behind, little do we know about his family. He was a private person and never let his personal life become a media discussion. Not many know that just like Ratan Tata, his step-mother, Simone Tata, a Swiss woman helped build India's first beauty brand, Lakme that gives competition to world's famous beauty labels.
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Simone Tata was born in 1930 in Geneva, Switzerland. She is a gradaute from the prestigious Geneva University. However, little did she knew that her visit to India as a tourist in the early 1950s would make her meet her MR Right, and with whom she would build Rs. 1 lakh crore business empire.
Simone Tata is the second wife of Naval H Tata, the father of Ratan Tata. He was a leading name in the Tata Group. In 1953, Simone came to India and, by chance, met Naval H Tata. They fell in love and got married in 1955, and she permanently stayed in Mumbai.
Simone entered the business in 1962 as a managing director of Lakme, Tata Group's beauty brand. Although, she had little experience, her expertise in beauty products became a crucial factor in transforming Lakme into a global brand. She became the chairperson of Lakme in 1982. Later, in 1987, she became a member of Tata Industries.
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Ratan Tata always demonstrated happiness. His eyes were always lit, and he had a ray of happiness in his heart. Despite facing discomfort after seeing his parents' divorce at a young age, Ratan Tata, in an interview with Human Of Bombay, tagged his childhood as a happy one.
Ratan Tata admitted that initially, there was rage and personal discomfort due to his parents' divorce, as it was uncommon in those days, but it was his grandmother who brought them all. In the same interaction, Ratan Tata revealed that when his mother remarried, the boys at his school would say a lot of mean things. But it was his grandmother, who taught him to maintain his dignity at all costs.
Well, Ratan Tata is no longer with us, but the way he led life will live on forever. His fans, friends, and family will always remember his preachings. Apart from them, it is Ratan Tata's other family, who consists of four-legged furries, will keep waiting for him at airport in the hope of greeting him again with some yummy treats from the flight he often got for them, or the ones living permanently at the Bombay House.
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