Hotelier Oberoi dies at 103

The founder of one of India's leading luxury hotel chains, Mohan Singh Oberoi, has died in Delhi at the age of 103.

He began his career as a receptionist at a hotel in the resort of Simla, and mortgaged his wife's jewellery to buy his first hotel there in 1934.

He cannily acquired Calcutta's Grand Hotel when the city was reeling from an outbreak of cholera, using it to house Allied troops during the Second World War.

With his gut feeling for opportunity, he built up an Oberoi empire comprising more than thirty-five hotels from Australia to Hungary.

He was the first Indian hotelier to employ women, when he introduced chambermaids at one of his Delhi hotels.

Mohan Oberoi served as a member of parliament in the 1960s and 70s.

He never celebrated his birthday, and for many years brought his date of birth forward by two years because he didn't want to be seen as somebody from the nineteenth century.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service