The first lady of Indian beauty

THE MOTHER OF TATA TRUSTS CHAIRMAN NOEL TATA AND STEPMOTHER OF LATE RATAN TATA WAS KNOWN FOR HER ROLE IN BUILDING COSMETICS BRAND LAKME AND LATER FOUNDING WESTSIDE

- ALOKANANDA CHAKRABORTY

HER CAREER WAS one of highs and super-highs although her name rarely cropped up during regularTata group conversations. Simone Tata, credited for her role in building the cosmetics brand Lakmé and later founding the retail chain Trent Ltd, passed away on December 5.

Simone, the mother of Tata Trusts chairman Noel Tata and the stepmother of late Ratan Tata, was an incredibly important figure in the world of beauty, fashion and retail. Many of today's celebrated beauty entrepreneurs and designers will look back on her as a hero because she embodied that moment in the 1960s and 70s when Indian fashion was not even a speck on the global map and it was largely thanks to her that India became such an inexorable force.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, founder & executive chairperson of Biocon Ltd, rued on X that her 'Shero' was no more. "Simone Tata was the doyen of women business leaders. I hugely admired her acumen and courage to pioneer Lakmé as a cosmetic era in India."