Anu Aga (India)
Anu Aga was born into an upper middle-class Parsi family in Mumbai. She graduated in economics and later did postgraduate studies in medical and psychiatric social work at the prestigious Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She married Rohinton Aga, a Cambridge and Harvard Business School educated Indian businessman, who built up his boiler-making operation Thermax into a leading environmental and engineering group.
Anu Aga started working for the company in 1985 and when her husband died of a heart attack in 1996, she took over running the business. She has since retired to concentrate on charity work, leaving her daughter in charge, but remains on the board. Thermax is a leading operator in energy conservation and waste heat management. Anu Aga’s fortune was put at $1.1 billion in Forbes’s list of world billionaires in early 2008. But the Thermax share price has fallen sharply since, and she is worth, at best, £250m today.
Entire article here.