Legendary investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala passed away on Sunday at the age of 62. He was struggling with multiple health problems, and reports claimed he was brought to the hospital at 06:45am and declared dead.
Jhunjhunwala, dubbed India's Warren Buffet, had recently entered the airlines industry with Akasa Air. Akasa had launched its commerical ops on August 7, and Jhunjhunwala had announced that he was undertaking this endeavour on the optimistic prediction that more people will start travelling by air again. “For the culture of a company to be frugal you’ve to start off fresh,” he said. “I am very, very bullish on India’s aviation sector in terms of demand," he said.
Jhunjhunwala, in an interview with Economic Times had said he had developed an interest in stock markets from a very young age. "My father was also interested in stocks. When I was a young child, he and his friends would drink in the evening and discuss about the stock market. I would listen to them and one day I asked him why do these prices fluctuate," he had said.
He finished his chartered accountancy and later dipped his toes in the stock markets. Multiple reports claimed he started with just Rs 5,000, which he grew to over Rs 11,000 crore.
Most recently, he had expressed intense skepticism of Indian new-age tech startup valuations, stating that the startup party will burst soon. He believes that he can make more money investing in shares of metal producers and banks than on new-age technology companies that are swarming the Indian primary market currently. "I don’t go there. This party [in new-age IPOs] will pop sometime,” Jhunjhunwala had said at an event organised by Motilal Oswal Asset Management, reported The Economic Times.