Vijaypat Singhania

Singhania had said that he only went into business at the behest of his father, Lala Kailashpat (L.K.) Singhania. He did not enjoy the subjects of commerce and economics as a student, and only came to appreciate them later in life when he was teaching postgraduate management classes at the JBIMS. He has mused that he might have been better off becoming a scientist or engineer, since maths and science were his best subjects in school and he tended to get poor marks in everything else. His father Lala Kailashpat Singhania initially ran Raymond after the Singhania family purchased it from E.D. Sassoon & Co. in 1944, when it was merely a textile mill. Singhania's cousin Gopal Krishna (G.K.) Singhania took it over after L.K. Singhania's death in 1969. Vijaypat Singhania became chairman in January 1980, after G.K. Singhania's death. According to Singhania, Hari Shankar Singhania, another of his cousins, was the one who initially wanted to take over Raymond after G.K. Singhania died. However, Singhania claimed that the senior executives threatened to quit at this prospect, saying they would only work for L.K. Singhania's eldest son. That happened to be Singhania, who at the time was running J.K. Chemicals, one of the J.K. Organisation companies. He was initially disinterested in the Raymond chairman position as he was happy at J.K. Chemicals, but said he agreed to take it once he heard of the senior executives' views. During his time at the helm of Raymond, he led the company into having one of the best-known clothing brands in India, it being one of the most successful of any of the Singhania family companies for much of his tenure. He also expanded it into an industrial conglomerate, taking it from solely a woolen textile manufacturer to also producing synthetic fabrics, denim, steel, files, and cement. This ran the company into trouble late in his chairmainship, however, as a recession affecting steel and cement cut deeply into the company's profits in 1996–97. Raymond put up several of its divisions for sale during this time. In September 2000, Singhania turned the Raymond chairmanship over to his son Gautam Singhania, who completed the sale of the company's synthetics, steel, and cement divisions early in his tenure, opting to retain the rest. Singhania stayed on as Chairman-Emeritus, in a non-executive capacity. In March 2007 he was nominated to be Chairman of the Governing Council at the IIMA until 2012 (succeeding N.R. Narayana Murthy). He had previously been on the board of the IIMA from 1991 to 2002. == Aviation ==

Singhania was an enthusiastic aviator; by 2003 he had accumulated over 5000 hours of flying experience. He has cited Howard Hughes and J.R.D. Tata as his idols in aviation. In 1988, he set a speed-over-time endurance record for microlight aircraft by flying solo from London Biggin Hill Airport in London to Safdarjung Airport in New Delhi over 23 days. The prior record holder Brian Milton and then-Minister-of-State Sheila Dikshit met him on the tarmac in Delhi to give their congratulations. They flew a Cessna Conquest painted to look like a tiger in honor of India; Singhania was the only Indian in the race. They made a flight time of 56 hours and 4 minutes, passing through nine countries in 23 days, leaving from and returning to Montreal. He flew with a balloon as tall as a 22-storey building and equipped with 18 burners, travelling in a pressurized aluminium capsule in place of the traditional basket to ward off high-altitude hypoxia. Aloft he encountered temperatures as low as -93 °C, "screamed quite loudly" according to him when he broke the record, then returned to the ground near the village of Panchale in Nashik district, in the space of about five hours total. After landing he gave prayers at a local shrine. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale verified his record using an altimeter, GPS, and barograph which were attached to the capsule and sealed in advance to rule out tampering. == Family feud ==

In 1998, Singhania was weighing the possibility of dividing the Raymond Group between his two sons, Madhupati Singania and Gautam Singhania, who were both on the board of directors at that time. As of the summer of that year, there was reportedly a tentative plan for Madhupati Singhania to relocate to Singapore with control of Raymond's international divisions, including J.K. England and Raymond Woolen Mills Kenya. As of 2007 he had obtained Singaporean citizenship and was running a consulting firm. In the wake of Madhupati Singhania's split with the family, Singhania instead chose to hand control of the Raymond Group wholly over to Gautam Singhania, staying on as Chairman-Emeritus. In 2017, the judge on Singhania's lawsuit requested that the two of them try to work things out within the family before pursuing the case further, noting that he felt the matter rightfully should not have required court resolution. Gautam Singhania said that he did not want the dispute to affect Raymond's reputation and that he would do whatever he could to resolve it. Singhania said that he was shocked he had needed to sue in the first place after how much he had given Gautam Singhania, and that given his son's "greed" and "arrogance and dishonesty" he doubted they would be able to reconcile even if they settled the case. == Books ==

Singhania wrote the book An Angel in the Cockpit, an account of his journey from the UK to India on a microlight aircraft in 1988. In 2021, Pan Macmillan published his autobiography An Incomplete Life. A warm review in The Tribune said that he "[accepts] his follies and foibles," keeping a "mostly reflective" tone, and that his "achievements go beyond the imagination" while "the missteps make him as vulnerable as any ordinary man." == Death ==

Singhania died on 28 March 2026, at the age of 87. == References ==