Shapoor Mistry

Today I had lunch with Shapoor Mistry, together with a dear friend, Prasoon Mukherjee.

Shapoor is the current Chairman of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group. This is a 160 year old Indian conglomerate. It is a very well known diversified family group dealing with infrastructure construction, real estate and oil and gas both in India and worldwide. They are also a significant 18.4% shareholder in the Tata group.

The Shapoorji Pallonji family are Parsis. Parsis were originally from Persia, which is modern day Iran. They are Zoroastrians, which is an ancient religion. They faced persecution in Persia after the Arab Muslims invaded there and as a result they started moving out in waves to India from about 800CE. They settled in India and were successful business people. The Parsis are great believers in philanthropy. Though they have been in India for a long time, they still retain their strong cultural and religious ties as Parsis. The Tata group is an example of successful Parsi business in India.

We had a simple lunch at Hyatt. He is lovely unassuming gentleman. He started off by telling me that their family name Mistry means carpenter in Parsi, which I thought was an apt description since they started off in business by doing construction. He explained to me their family businesses. He also talked about the history of Parsis and Zoroastrianism and about the Tata group. Am so glad to have met him.