Keshub Mahindra, former Emeritus Chairman, Mahindra & Mahindra 1923- 2023

Keshub Mahindra was born in Shimla in 1923 into a well to do family.  Many in the family were educated at prestigious international universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and, in Keshub's case, Wharton.  Keshub's father, K C Mahindra (1894-1963) and uncle, J. C. Mahindra (1892-1950) founded Mahindra & Mahindra (https://www.mahindra.com/) in 1945. The group has grown to be one of the most respected groups in India with a dominant position in farm equipment (and particularly tractors where it is one of the largest producers globally) and in the automobile sector where it produces a range of SUVs and utility vehicles.  At the time I interviewed Keshub in 2011 the group had over 140,000 employees.  Today it has over 320,000 employees across more than 20 industries and in over 100 countries.Keshub had a stellar career and was the Group's Chairman and Emeritus Chairman from 1963 to 2012. The only "stain" in his long career was that he was non executive Chairman of Union Carbide India at the time of the Bhopal disaster in December 1984 which led to the death of over 10,000 people in and around the factory .  He and several senior executives were found to be responsible.At the time I interviewed him in 2011 he was 88 and still extremely lucid with an excellent memory.  I certainly enjoyed spending time with him and found him to be a true gentlemen of the old school.I should also add this is a podcast episode where I have used Speechify to turn my written word into speech using AI with an Australian voice.  Apologies for any imperfections but certainly my experience so far is that AI can read far better than me!Please note that these interviews took place some time ago - over 25 years ago in the case of the South East Asian life story book and around 10 to 15 years ago in the case of the two Indian life story books.  However, their stories are correct to the time of the interviews and the objective is to demonstrate the entrepreneurial skills they exhibited at the time of the interviews in building their businesses.