MAM
Simone Tata, pioneer behind Lakmé and Westside, dies at 95
SWITZERLAND: Simone Tata, the Swiss-born business force who turned Lakmé into a household favourite and built Westside into a modern retail staple, has died at 95 in Mumbai after a brief illness, the Tata Group confirmed.
Her final rites will take place on Saturday at the Cathedral of the Holy Name Church in Colaba, followed by a memorial mass.
A Swiss arrival who reshaped Indian beauty
Born Simone Naval Dunoyer in Geneva in 1930, she first visited India in the 1950s as a tourist. A chance trip changed her world. She met Naval Tata, married him in 1955, and made Mumbai her home.
She joined Lakmé in the early 1960s when it was a tiny offshoot of Tata Oil Mills. By 1961 she was managing director and by 1982 she became chairperson. Her strategy was sharp: beauty for Indian skin tones, accessible glamour, and a brand India could proudly wear. Lakmé grew into a mass-market icon, going toe to toe with global cosmetics giants.
Turning sale proceeds into a retail revolution
When Lakmé was sold to Hindustan Unilever in the mid-1990s, she did not step back. She powered forward. The proceeds led to the creation of Trent Limited. Westside was born. The brand redefined Indian department stores long before organised retail became the norm. Fashionable, aspirational, and home-grown, it quickly spread nationwide.
Impact beyond boardrooms
She also worked quietly with philanthropic organisations including the Sir Ratan Tata Institute. Reserved in demeanour yet fierce in resolve, Simone Tata opened doors for Indian women in boardrooms and beauty aisles alike.
Her survivors include her son Noel Tata, the current chairperson of Tata Trusts, along with his family.
Simone Tata changed how India shops and how India shades its lips. Lakmé mirrors her bold stroke. Westside stands tall as her vision stitched into fabric and storefronts. India’s shelves still sparkle. The matriarch who helped them shine has taken her bow.
Brands
Google completes $32 billion Wiz deal to boost AI and cloud security
Wiz joins Google Cloud but keeps multi-cloud support across rival platforms
NEW YORK: Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz, marking the biggest deal in the tech giant’s history and signalling a major push to strengthen security in the era of artificial intelligence and multi-cloud computing.
The New York-headquartered cybersecurity firm will join Google Cloud while continuing to operate under the Wiz brand. Crucially, the company will maintain support for multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, reflecting the reality that most large organisations run their systems across several cloud providers.
Google said the acquisition is designed to help organisations build and scale applications more securely as businesses and governments increasingly move critical systems and data to the cloud. At the same time, the rapid adoption of generative AI has introduced new cybersecurity risks, with attackers also using AI to launch faster and more sophisticated attacks.
Wiz has built a reputation for simplifying cloud security. Its platform maps entire cloud environments, identifying vulnerabilities, potential attack paths and misconfigurations before they can be exploited. By connecting insights from code, cloud infrastructure and runtime environments, it allows security and engineering teams to detect and fix risks early in the development cycle.
Bringing Wiz into Google Cloud will create what the company describes as a unified security platform capable of detecting, preventing and responding to threats across cloud and AI environments. The combined offering will also integrate Google’s own security capabilities, including threat intelligence tools, security operations platforms and the cybersecurity expertise of Mandiant.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the move reflects the growing importance of security as more organisations rely on AI and cloud technologies. “Keeping people safe online has always been part of Google’s mission,” he said, adding that the partnership will help organisations innovate with greater confidence.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, said the goal is to make security an enabler rather than a roadblock for businesses building modern applications. He noted that the combined technologies will simplify the complex task of protecting hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
For Wiz, the acquisition opens the door to global scale while keeping its core philosophy intact. Co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said the company remains committed to an open, multi-cloud approach and will continue supporting customers regardless of where their workloads run.
Over the past year, Wiz has expanded its platform to address emerging risks tied to AI applications, including tools that help organisations monitor AI usage, detect AI-specific vulnerabilities and secure AI workloads during runtime.
With Google’s infrastructure, artificial intelligence capabilities and security ecosystem now behind it, Wiz plans to accelerate development of its platform while continuing to serve enterprises, governments and start-ups operating across different cloud environments.
For Google Cloud, the acquisition adds a powerful piece to its security puzzle as competition intensifies among global cloud providers. For customers, it promises a future where building fast in the cloud does not have to come at the expense of staying secure.
