Nand Kishore Goenka, patriarch of the Goenka family, dies at 96

MUMBAI: Nand Kishore Goenka, patriarch of the Goenka family and father of Essel Group chairman Subhash Chandra, died peacefully on Monday morning in Mumbai at the age of 96.

The family’s grief has been tempered, deliberately, by celebration. In a tribute posted on social media, Chandra made clear he wanted his father’s passing marked not with mourning alone but with recognition of a life spanning nearly a century of samaj seva, cow seva and national service as an RSS swayam sevak.

Goenka’s life was built on grassroots service and quiet nationalism. He spent decades as a dedicated swayamsevak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a commitment to national duty that shaped not just his own outlook but the philanthropic instincts of the wider Goenka family and its business ventures.

Two causes defined him beyond that. In samaj seva, he championed community welfare and rural upliftment for decades, backing local institutions that delivered education and medical care to the underprivileged. In gau seva, he built and maintained gaushalas, treating the protection of cows as a duty owed to both nature and society.

His mortal remains were placed at Vasant Sagar on Marine Drive, where family, friends and prominent figures from business and media gathered to pay their respects. True to his roots, the family will carry his remains back to Haryana, with the cremation and last rites scheduled for Wednesday morning at Goenka Udyan in Agroha.

Goenka leaves behind children, grandchildren, and a web of institutions built on the values he lived by, proof, as his family sees it, that business success and community devotion were never mutually exclusive. Om Shanti.