UK Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has paid homage to Ratan Tata as a “titan” of the business world who played a huge role in shaping British industry.

Soon after the news of the Tata Group chief’s passing away hit the headlines on Wednesday night, the minister took to social media to offer his tributes to the man credited with much of the Mumbai-headquartered company’s reputation as one of the largest employers in the UK.

“Sad to hear about the passing of Ratan Tata. He was truly a titan of the business world and someone who played a huge role in shaping British industry,” said Reynolds.

“My thoughts and prayers are with his friends, family and everyone in the Tata Group,” he said.

Meanwhile, Indian High Commissioner to the UK Vikram Doraiswami led a minute’s silence in the memory of Ratan Tata during a pre-scheduled Diwali reception co-hosted by the High Commission of India in London.

During the event, co-hosted with the India All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) near the Houses of Parliament in London on Wednesday, Doraiswami paid tribute to the Tata Group chair as a great champion of the India-UK partnership.

“On a sombre note, I share the news with great sorrow of the passing of one of India’s most celebrated businessmen Ratan Tata,” said Doraiswami, addressing a cross-party gathering of parliamentarians, entrepreneurs and community leaders.

“No man has embodied the India-UK partnership quite as much as Ratan Tata did. This is a man for whom Mumbai/India and London/UK were both home. This is a man who created the sense of an India-UK partnership embodied in everything – from Air India, which is back as Tata airline, to Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) to Taj Hotel to Tata Steel to indeed everything, including industries of the future with his decision to invest in a battery factory in the UK,” he said.

Lord Karan Bilimoria, founder of Cobra beer and co-chair of the India APPG, paid tribute to a “fellow Parsi” who worked hard to nurture the bonds between India and Britain.

“Mr Ratan Tata led many CII delegations across the world and really showed us the way on how Indian companies’ footprints would be spread around the globe. In his memory, it is good to pledge from the Indian industry side that this (India-UK) economic and commercial corridor would be deepened and taken forward in the true spirit in which he started the globalisation of Indian companies,” said Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), in his address.

It was during his tenure as chairman of the Tata Group that the multinational made several high-profile acquisitions in the UK—taking over Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, luxury car brands Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR) and Tetley, the well-known global tea brand.

The Tata Group’s footprint in the UK includes its ownership of the country’s largest steelworks at Port Talbot in south Wales, currently undergoing a mega green transformation towards electric arc furnace.

The steel giant is one of Europe’s leading steel producers, with steelmaking in the Netherlands and the UK, and manufacturing plants across Europe. The company’s tube products are used across a broad range of industries, including construction, machinery fabrication, energy and automotive.

In July last year, the Tata Group is to invest over GBP 4 billion in setting up a new electric vehicle (EV) battery plant, or gigafactory, in Britain which will create thousands of jobs across the supply chain. With Tata Motors owned JLR as the anchor customer of the new gigafactory with an initial output of 40GWh, the venture is one of the largest in Europe.

While he had retired a few years ago, Ratan Tata is credited with setting the company on its growth trajectory in the UK and Europe.

Beginning with Tata Tea’s acquisition of Tetley in 2000, Tata companies made several significant overseas acquisitions including Corus by Tata Steel, Jaguar and Land Rover by Tata Motors and Brunner Mond by Tata Chemicals.

In 2004, Ratan Tata, then Chairman of Tata Sons, summed up the Tata group’s efforts to internationalise its operations thus: “I hope that a hundred years from now we will spread our wings far beyond India, that we become a global group, operating in many countries, an Indian business conglomerate that is at home in the world, carrying the same sense of trust that we do today.”