Indian tycoon Krishna Kumar Birla, whose family empire spanned industries from sugar to newspapers, died Saturday at the age of 90, an aide said.
Birla, whose business holdings included sugar, fertilizer, chemicals, heavy engineering, textile, shipping and newspaper companies, had been suffering from pneumonia, his personal secretary Nand Kumar told AFP.
"Krishna Kumar Birla passed away this morning at his Kolkata residence," Kumar said.
Birla, a member of one of India's super-rich business families, was the son of Ghanashyam Das Birla, a leading Indian industrialist and a close associate of Indian independence icon Mahatma Gandhi.
He had been unwell for the past two weeks, Kumar said.
His death, in the eastern city of Kolkata, came just a month after his wife Manorama Devi Birla died.
Known more familiarly as KK Birla, he is survived by three daughters -- Nandini Nopani, Jyotsna Poddar and Shobhana Bhartia, vice chairman of the Hindustan Times newspaper, one of India's biggest-circulation national dailies.
The Birlas have been synonymous with business in India for more than a century and are household names.
Birla was a strong early champion of moves to reform India's economy and served three terms as a member of India's upper parliamentary house from 1984 to 2002.
"There were many business leaders who were worried, who were apprehensive, who were nervous about the (economic) changes," recalled Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who as India's finance minister in the early 1990s began the process of opening up the country's inward-looking economy to the world.
But Birla "understood the importance and the relevance of what we were doing," Singh said last December when releasing Birla's autobiography.
Birla worked not only on expanding the sprawling corporate empire established by his father but also was known for his interest in philanthropy and in promoting education.
"He was an outstanding visionary, a great parliamentarian, a business leader par excellence and a builder of modern educational and scientific institutions," said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in a tribute.
Birla's body would be cremated on the banks of the Hooghly River, which borders Kolkata, his personal secretary said.