Jagdish Narain Sapru, former chairman of ITC Ltd, and one of the most respected management professionals in India, died in Kolkata on the night of May 8. He was 74.
The son of Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, a leading light in the pre-Independence era, Jagdish was born in Allahabad and joined ITC in 1955. After working in many of the company’s offices across the country, he moved to Kolkata in the mid-1960s to the ITC head office, where he rose to be chairman in 1983 for a nine-year term, succeeding Ajit Narain Haksar.
After his retirement, Sapru adopted Kolkata as his hometown and busied himself with various charities. He was also parallel chairman of companies such as BOC Plc and Coates of India, both market leaders in their own businesses. Self-effacing and soft-spoken, he shunned the limelight, saying, “If you talk about charity, it is no charity at all”.
He was also one of the most respected members in Kolkata’s club circuit, enjoying special membership status at almost all the leading clubs such as the Royal Calcutta Golf Club and the Calcutta Cricket & Football Club. He supervised the expansion of the hotels business of ITC as well as its new businesses such as paper and financial services, at a time when such diversification was seen as unnecessary for the cigarette company.
Insiders say Sapru ensured peace in the boardroom between BAT plc and the Indian institutional shareholders in ITC, which was replaced by boardroom conflict under his successor K L Chugh. After retirement, Jagdish and his wife divided their time between Kolkata, the homes of the their two sons Rakesh and Nirukt in Delhi and Kuala Lumpur, and travelled extensively.
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