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 K.K. 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.