Hero Cycles founder O.P. Munjal dead

O.P. Munjal, founder chairman of bicycle giant Hero Cycles, died in Punjab's Ludhiana city on Thursday, family sources said.

Munjal, 86, was admitted to the Hero Heart Institute at Ludhiana's Dayanand Medical College and Hospital where he died.

From a modest beginning of bicycle spare parts business in Amritsar in 1944 with his brothers to being one of the largest bicycle manufacturers in the world, O.P. Munjal, known as the father of cycle industry in the country, scripted a successful business story.

The Hero Cycles factory was set up in 1956 in Ludhiana with a capacity for producing 25 cycles a day. It now produces nearly 19,000 cycles daily.

Listed in the 'Guinness Books of World Records' in 1986 as the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world in 1986, Hero Cycles commands nearly 48 percent of market share in the country's cycle market.