Editorial: A life less ordinary

The passing of Ratan Naval Tata, the Tata Group’s chairman emeritus, veteran industrialist, and philanthropist who breathed his last at Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai, signifies the end of an epoch for corporate India. The metropolis that the 86-year-old doyen referred to as home, bears numerous landmarks — the Tata House, now the India headquarters of Deutsche Bank; the Bombay House, the Tata Group’s century old headquarters; the iconic Taj Mahal Palace Hotel and the Air India building — all symbolising the deep-rooted manner in which brand Tata had entrenched itself into the socioeconomic fabric of Maximum City.

The news of the business baron’s death has prompted an outpouring of tributes from everyone across the board — from the industrial fraternity, to the political high corridors, and the masses on social media. A universal sentiment expressed online by many microbloggers was that having not even met Ratan Tata once in their lifetimes, his demise felt like a collective loss for the nation, considering there are millions whose lives have been touched by the ‘salt to software’ conglomerate’s industrial exceptionalism.

Interestingly, what emerges from the many accounts of those who have worked in close proximity to Ratan Tata is a narrative of him personifying the people over profits, or the human face of capitalism, if at all one could attribute such a character trait to capitalism. The stories of him being inspired to incept India’s most affordable car, the Tata Nano, has now entered the annals of India’s automobile lore. Apparently, the inspiration were commuters on scooters, with their wives riding pillion, and the kids sandwiched between the couple and the handlebar. It was then that Mr Tata had the brainwave to develop a sub-Rs 1 lakh car that would be affordable to all.

It’s an altogether different story that this venture went downhill subsequently, but one couldn’t fault Tata for his intent. Many other tales of Tata’s compassionate approach to business have also come up in the aftermath of his passing. One of them revolves around his inspection of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, after it was devastated by the 26/11 terror attacks. During his rounds, his hospitality staffers were visibly anxious about attending to the needs of the crew that were injured during the siege. It seems Tata had said then that he wasn’t there to pick holes in the team’s crisis response protocols, but simply there to see ‘what more could be done.’

Tata’s industrial acumen is something to write home about — closing as many as 60 deals over a 21-year-stint, bringing home global brands like Jaguar-Land Rover, Corus and Tetley. He also engineered TCS’s debut at the bourses in 2004, taking the company public, raising $1.2 bn in India’s biggest and Asia’s second largest IPO at that time. Having cut his teeth, building and steering legacy businesses over several decades, Tata in his later years, developed a keen eye for spotting promising start-ups and bankrolling them as an angel investor.

As far as Indian entrepreneurs are concerned, perhaps the biggest takeaway from Ratan Tata’s life is that it pays to remain humble. At a time when brash entrants in the start-up space are grabbing headlines with their chest-thumping bad-boy antics, competitive trolling, valuation-centric declarations on social media, and industrialists making a side-show with billion dollar extravaganzas, employing pay-per-view popstars, we had unassuming folks like Tata who raised the bar for Indian enterprises, without much hue and cry.