Ajit Narain Haksar (11 January 1925 – 19 May 2005) was the first Indian chairman of

ITC Limited ITC Limited is an Indian conglomerate company headquartered in Kolkata. ITC has a diversified presence across industries such as FMCG, hotels, software, packaging, paperboards, specialty papers and agribusiness. The company has 13 businesses in ...

and was voted the Chairman Emeritus of the company. He has received the 'Outstanding Industrialist Award' and the 'Udyog Rattan Award.'

Early life

Ajit Narain Haksar was born on 11 January 1925, in Gwalior to a

Kashmiri Kashmiri may refer to: * People or things related to the Kashmir Valley or the broader region of Kashmir * Kashmiris, an ethnic group native to the Kashmir Valley * Kashmiri language, their language People with the name * Kashmiri Saikia Baruah ...

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

family. He was educated at the

Doon School The Doon School (informally Doon School or Doon) is a selective all-boys boarding school in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India, which was established in 1935. It was envisioned by Satish Ranjan Das, a lawyer from Calcutta, who prevised a school mode ...

and subsequently at

Allahabad University , mottoeng = "As Many Branches So Many Trees" , established = , type = Public , chancellor = Ashish Chauhan , vice_chancellor = Sangita Srivastava , head_label ...

. He then did an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

ITC

Haksar joined ITC in 1948, and was made Marketing Director in 1966. By 1968, Haksar was made Deputy Chairman and was then instated as chairman in 1969. He retired from ITC in 1983 after 34 years with the company, and was succeeded by his brother-in-law, Jagdish Narain Sapru. Haksar was known as the chairman who first took ITC out of purely the

tobacco industry The tobacco industry comprises those persons and companies who are engaged in the growth, preparation for sale, shipment, advertisement, and distribution of tobacco and tobacco-related products. It is a global industry; tobacco can grow in any ...

and into

hotels A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a ref ...

and paperboards.

Family life

Haksar is survived by his two children and their spouses, four grandchildren and their spouses, and six great-grandchildren.

References

* Autobiography, ''Bite the Bullet: Thirty-four Years with ITC'', New Delhi, India: Viking, Penguin Books India, (1993) 536 p.
Obituary at Rediff News
{{DEFAULTSORT:Haksar, Ajit Narain 1925 births 2005 deaths Kashmiri people The Doon School alumni Harvard Business School alumni