Piyushbhai Desai

Piyushbhai Desai was the chairman of the Wagh Bakri Tea Group, one of India's best known tea companies, a family run business based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, that traces its history to 1892. He died on 15 September 2026 at the age of 86 after a cardiac arrest, according to a company statement and Indian media reports. He had been associated with the tea trade for more than six decades and was widely regarded as a tea taster, industry organiser, philanthropist, and advocate of Gandhian values in business.

The Wagh Bakri brand grew from the work of his grandfather Narandas Desai, who established a tea estate near Durban in 1892 and later founded the Gujarat Tea Depot after returning to India in 1919. The brand's emblem of a tiger and a goat drinking together became a public symbol of non violence and coexistence, a meaning Desai often explained to visitors and colleagues. Under his long leadership the group expanded from its Gujarat roots into a national brand and an exporter, with a reported presence in dozens of countries and a significant share of India's packaged tea market.

Desai was known inside the industry as a meticulous tea evaluator and as a builder of trade institutions. He was a founding member of the Gujarat Tea Traders Association, the Western India Tea Dealers Association, and the Federation of All India Tea Traders Associations, and served as the first president of GTTA. He sat on the Tea Board of India from 1998 to 2002 and later received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Northeastern Tea Association for his contribution to the trade.

Outside the boardroom he was closely linked to Gujarat Vidyapith and Gandhian social work. Former Gujarat Vidyapith vice chancellor Sudarshan Iyengar remembered him as an entirely self made entrepreneur and a top class tea taster whose family connection to Gandhi, through his grandfather's meeting with the Mahatma in South Africa, shaped a lifelong interest in trusteeship and simple living. Desai was a founding director of the Anuvad Foundation, which worked on translating Gandhian texts and Indian language literature, and he served as a trustee and later vice president of Sadvichar Parivar.

His philanthropy was especially visible through the Blind People's Association in Ahmedabad. After first donating to the organisation in the early 1980s, he continued support through earthquake relief, an endowment for eye surgeries, solar equipment, tea stall kits, and smart glasses for people with visual impairments. He served as BPA president from 2016 to 2020 (some accounts give 2014 to 2020). Associates linked that commitment in part to his daughter Jagruti, who lives with an orthopaedic disability.

During the 2002 post Godhra violence in Gujarat, Desai was one of the few prominent corporate voices to join peace marches and speak openly against communal violence. Colleagues later described him as a mahajan, a business figure who saw social obligation as part of commerce rather than separate from it. He remained involved in Wagh Bakri affairs as a mentor until around 2020, then gradually handed day to day leadership to the next generation while keeping an interest in music and yoga. He is survived by six daughters. Last rites were performed in Ahmedabad the day after his death.