Raunaq Singh Passes Away

On 30 September, 2002, 11 days after he retired from the post of chairman of Apollo Tyres, a company he founded in 1972, Raunaq Singh passed away peacefully in his sleep at the age of 80 years.

Along with Har Prasad Nanda of Escorts and Bhai Mohan Singh of Ranbaxy, Raunaq Singh was among the handful of people who came over from Pakistan during Partition and rose to dizzying heights in Indian business. With Nanda and Raunaq Singh gone, Bhai Mohan Singh is the only representative left of that era.

But unlike Nanda and Bhai Mohan Singh, Raunaq Singh had humble origins. Before Partition, he used to run a shop in Lahore selling steel tubes and pipes. After being uprooted from Lahore, he set up a similar shop in Delhi. That was followed by several manufacturing ventures. The big one came in 1972 when he set up Apollo Tyres which is today India