By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi: George Muthoot, an Orthodox Christian who played a pivotal role in building one of India’s most trusted financial power houses, died March 5 in Delhi. He was 71.
George, the chairman and whole time director of the Muthoot Group, was rushed to Delhi’s Escorts Hospital after he fell down a flight of stairs in his home. The hospital authorities declared him dead upon arrival at around 7 pm.
Funeral details will be announced later.
Muthoot was a former lay trustee of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and a renowned philanthropist.
He was the third generation from his family to become the chairman of the Muthoot Group.
Under his stewardship, Muthoot Finance achieved new heights of growth and became the market leader in the gold loan industry.
George Muthoot was responsible for scaling up the group’s presence beyond southern India by expanding its branch presence across north, east and west India and thereby transforming the company into a pan India organization.
His sudden death will be an irreparable loss to the company, employees, all stakeholders, family, and friends. All directors and employees of the company convey deep sympathy, sorrow and condolences to his family, the company has stated.
Born on November 2, 1949, in Kozhencherry, George Muthoot was among the six Malayalees who made it to the Forbes Magazine’s Rich List in 2020.
A graduate in Mechanical Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology, he joined the family business, The Muthoot Group, at a young age and became its managing director in 1979. He took over as the chairman of the group in 1993.
Under his leadership, The Muthoot Group, which began as a trading company in Kozhencherry in Pathanamthitta, diversified its operations and is today a business conglomerate comprising 20 diversified divisions with presence pan India and overseas.
He was a member of the national executive committee of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. He was ranked India’s 26th richest person with a net worth of $4.8 billion by Forbes magazine in 2020.
His wife Sara George Muthoot is the director of St George High School, Delhi. George M George, executive director of Muthoot Group, Alexander George, group director, and the late Paul Muthoot George are their sons.
The Muthoot firm’s operating history has evolved over a period of 82 years since Mathai George Muthoot (the father of the promoters) founded a gold loan business in 1939 under the heritage of a trading business established by his father, Ninan Mathai Muthoot, in 1887.
The company has a branch network of more than 4,500 branches across 23 states, the national capital territory of Delhi and five Union Territories in India.
It serves about 200,000 plus retail customers every day for gold loans and other products and has about 200,000 plus retail investor base for its non-convertible debentures. It employs more than 25,000 people in its operations. Its loan assets stood at 416.11 billion rupees as at March 31, 2020.