Ratan Tata: The Modest Indian Tycoon Who Transformed Indian Industry
An iconic figure in India’s corporate world, Ratan Tata, who passed away at 86 on the 9th of October 2024, was one of the nation’s most celebrated business leaders. He helmed the Tata Group, a diversified conglomerate with a presence in sectors ranging from steel and automotive to software and aviation, for over two decades. The group, which traces its origins back to the visionary Jamsetji Tata, now operates more than 100 companies, employs approximately 660,000 individuals, and generates annual revenues exceeding $100 billion.
The Tata Group was founded nearly 155 years ago. His successor shaped the group into a global player under his succession plan. The firm acquired huge international assets in the car brands Jaguar and Land Rover of the UK and steelmaker Corus, an Anglo-Dutch origin. These acquisitions marked important milestones in India’s corporate history and helped convey to the world a vision of the group as a modern, outward-looking conglomerate. While none of these proved entirely successful – a disastrous foray into telecoms is one example – the successful takeover of Tetley in 2000 represented, at the time of its announcement, the largest international acquisition ever undertaken by an Indian company, making it the world’s second-largest tea producer.
A member of an illustrious Parsi family, Ratan Tata was born in 1937. His childhood was dominated by the fact that his parents had separated themselves in the 1940s. He considered college an escape from India. He landed at Cornell University, USA, where he graduated in architecture. He honed his skills in flying and driving in the US. But his life took another turn in 1962 when his grandmother’s illness made him go back to India. He started his work-life journey in the Tata Group at this point of time. He began his job at one of the Tata Group firms-the steel plant located in Jamshedpur from where he gained direct experience.
By the early 1970s, he operated two ailing group companies, one in electronics and the other in textiles. While he could regain the lost glory of the latter, his efforts at the textile wing were rather patchy. The defining moment of his career came in 1991 when he was chosen as the successor to JRD Tata, who had led the group for more than five decades. When his appointment was announced, it was highly criticized and people just did not know whether he was the right person for the job. He took it to become an organization that began as a traditional Indian manufacturing firm but eventually turned into a world brand with a heavy focus on consumer goods.
A good project close to his heart has been Tata Nano designed with the objective of making safe yet affordable cars for the masses. It was launched in 2009 with much media hype and was a compact car to sell at an astonishing price of 100,000 rupees. Problems in production and marketing ensured that this ambitious project did not quite cut the ice. Branding Nano as the “world’s cheapest car” went wrong as a strategy and affected the market appeal of the car.
The major challenge in his career was the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. The attack targeted the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel owned by the Tata Group. It was at a time when at the Taj, 33 people lost their lives, among which were 11 hotel employees. Their response came with compassion and total commitment to rebuild. It granted lifetime financial assistance to the families of workers killed or maimed and brought the hotel back within 21 months for almost a billion-dollar cost.
Chandrasekaran returned to Tata Sons in 2016 as interim chairman after the sacking of the then-outgoing chairman made it awkward for the Group to find stable footing. It resulted in a bitter management wrangle that they ended by appointing a chairman from within the group, thus ending the situation. He remained respected for his work to both the group and Indian business afterwards.
Humility, discipline, and a high sense of purpose characterized Ratan Tata’s leadership. He was maintaining a daily to-do list and reflective enough about the social responsibilities of the company. On one of Tata’s factories in Pune during the late 1980s when a labour strike occurred, he himself admitted that there must have been some lapses in how the company interacted with the workers.
He always made it a point that business without purpose was useless. He aligned the ethos of the group to marry capitalism with philanthropy. He gave his belief form where the majority of companies formed in Tata Group were belonging to philanthropic trusts. It ensured that the wealth generated by the conglomerate was infused back into society through charitable pursuits.
In a speech that he gave way back in 2009, he came out with his vision for an India wherein the only contention for competition is merit. So, long as this statement reflected the lifetime involvement with creating an inclusive society where success in the eyes of business was not defined just in terms of profit but against the beneficial impact on people’s lives.
Ratan Tata will thus be remembered as one of resilience, foresight, and a deep sense of duty toward society. His stewardship transformed the Tata Group into one of the world’s most respected conglomerates while setting a yardstick for high corporate responsibility and ethical leadership in India.
