One ‘Ratan’ to rule them all
A leader who stood tall and led by example, the media-shy industry veteran has left behind a void in India Inc that cannot be filled
Art illustration of Ratan Tata
CHENNAI: Ratan Naval Tata’s journey — helming one of India’s most recognisable business houses, offers lessons aplenty to corporate India. The media-shy industry veteran was known as much for his unassuming demeanour, as he was for his interest in start-ups and philanthropy, and of course, his love for animals.
The Tata Group’s chairman Emeritus had rightly earned the goodwill of entrepreneurs across generations — from pre-liberalisation boomers to the post-globalisation GenZers. He controlled as many as 30 companies in over 100 countries, and helped grow the Tata Group revenues. He owned less than 1 per cent of the enterprise that bears his family name, but under his stewardship, the Tata Group grew over 70 times. Today, the group is a behemoth - dipping its dainty Parsi fingers into everything from coffee to cars, salt to software, steel, power, airlines and e-commerce.
It recently forayed into the holy grail of high tech — Tata Electronics partnered with PSMC, Taiwan to establish India’s first AI-enabled semiconductor fab in Dholera. It’s a Rs 91,000 cr enterprise projected to manufacture over 50,000 wafers a month, and create over 1 lakh skilled jobs. Closer home, Tata Electronics’ Rs 6,000 cr iPhone plant in Hosur, will start production in November, employing 50,000 workers, mostly women. The facility is Apple’s fourth in India and Tata’s second for iPhones, a gentle reminder of Ratan’s forward thinking vision.
Ratan, of course, has been there and done that, having started off on the shop floor, before joining the Tata Group management in 1971. There, he served as a director, in charge of one of the group firms, the National Radio and Electronics Co. A decade later, he became chairman of Tata Industries and in 1991, took over the chairmanship of the Tata Group from his uncle, JRD Tata, who had been in charge for over half a century.
As chairman of Tata Sons, the group’s main holding company, for over two decades, Ratan oversaw the conglomerate’s aggressive expansion, acquiring the world’s second-largest tea company, the London-based Tetley Tea for $431.3 million in 2000, picking up the truck-manufacturing operations of South Korea’s Daewoo Motors for $102 million in 2004, paying $11.3 billion to take over Anglo-Dutch steel manufacturer Corus Group, and spending $2.3 billion to purchase British luxury automobile brands Jaguar and Land Rover from the Ford Motor Company.
Having said that, Tata wasn’t immune to controversies. Though the group was not implicated in the 2008 Radia tapes controversy, the leaked recordings of purported phone calls he made to lobbyist Nira Radia were made public. He also found himself at the centre of a power struggle within the group twice in his career — first when pitted against well-entrenched long-time executives upon taking over as chairman in 1991, and then in 2016, four years after his retirement, during an acrimonious tiff with his successor, Cyrus Mistry. He emerged triumphant in both episodes.
Tata briefly served as the interim chairman in October 2016 and stepped down in January 2017 when N Chandrasekaran was appointed the chairman of the Tata Group. In his later years, he took on the role of an angel investor through his company RNT Capital Advisors, which bankrolled over 30 startups, including Ampere, Ola Electric, Paytm, Snapdeal, Lenskart and Zivame.
Pivotal in putting India on the global map
By CA Santhanakrishnan S
CHENNAI: Ratan Tata exemplified the qualities of leadership celebrated in the timeless Thirukkural: Courage, generosity, wisdom, and energy (Kural 382) His humility, kindness, and unmatched philanthropy set him apart, despite being a formidable businessman. A man of simplicity, he often carried his own luggage while travelling, a reflection of his modesty. Despite leading one of the world’s most valuable business groups, Tata’s name never appeared among the richest billionaires, a testament to his deep-rooted values of service and charity.
Ratan Tata’s influence extended far beyond corporate strategy; his leadership fostered a culture of integrity and ethics. The way the Tata group handled the 2008 Taj Mahal Hotel terror attack showcased the values he instilled in his employees, particularly their compassion and duty.
I had the privilege of meeting him several times during my tenure as a director at various Tata companies. What struck me most was his extraordinary willingness to listen. Even in critical decisions, he considered the perspectives of others, a quality that left a profound impression on me.
My partner recalls a trustee meeting regarding the Kolkata cancer hospital funded by Tata Trusts. The project had gone over budget, and when asked why, the trustees remarked on Ratan’s large heart. After someone mentioned the plight of family members accompanying cancer patients, he immediately sanctioned Rs 10 crore for a building to accommodate them, ensuring food was provided at subsidised rates. Such acts of compassion defined his leadership.
Ratan Tata was pivotal in putting India on the global map. In 2000, when Tata Tea, with a net worth of Rs 800 crore, made its audacious bid to acquire the UK-based Tetley Tea for Rs 2,000 cr, it marked the start of Tata’s global expansion. The acquisition of Jaguar Land Rover from Ford, transforming a loss-making entity into a global powerhouse, is legendary and underscored his boldness.
Under his stewardship, the Tata Group grew from a $10 billion enterprise to a $100 billion multinational. For over 46 years, I witnessed first-hand the group’s commitment to ethical business practices and impeccable corporate governance.
If anyone truly lived Gandhi’s principle of trusteeship—viewing business wealth as belonging to society and not personal property—it was Ratan Tata. In today’s world, leaders like Ratan Tata are rare. His loss is inexpressible, and we can only hope that one day, another will rise to walk in his footsteps.
(The writer is former director of several Tata companies)
Personification of grace, humility
By S Ramasundaram
The only time I met Ratan Tata in person was on a flight to Lagos, Nigeria, on Gandhi Jayanti Day in 2000. As a Joint Secretary in the Commerce Ministry, I was a member of a Ministry of Commerce Delegation, led by Omar Abdullah, then Minister of State when Murasoli Maran was the Cabinet Minister for Commerce and Industry in the Cabinet of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. At that time, Ratan Tata was the Chairman of Tata Sons, one of the largest and oldest industrial conglomerates of India. What struck me and other co-passengers were his simplicity and humility. He had a team of four or five CEOs of the Tata Group. From their interactions, no one could have guessed who was the chairman and who a CEO – Tata behaved just as one of the members of the Tata team. When the flight arrived in Lagos, he got down as per sequence with only a handbag and waited patiently while his CEOs were collecting their checked in luggage. He then left along with his team in a shared car and not separately.
I got to hear a lot more about Ratan Tata when I was on the Board of Titan during 2006-09. Titan Watches (now Titan Company) is a joint venture of TN Govt’s TIDCO and the Tata Group and was set up in the mid-1980s. Sometime in the year 2000, Xerxes Desai, the founding CEO of Titan, proposed the setting up of a jewellery division (later named ‘Tanishq’). During the presentation at Bombay House, the Tata group’s HQ in Mumbai, Ratan Tata famously questioned Desai “Is Titan a watch company with a jewellery business or a jewellery company with a watch business?” Even after McKinsey was commissioned to do a study on this conundrum and they strongly supported the setting up of the jewellery business, Ratan Tata was not fully convinced. But he fully respected Desai’s judgement and gave the go ahead. Soon after, when Tanishq overtook the watch business by several multiples, Ratan Tata had the grace to admit, “we have been proved wrong”. (Quoted in the book “Titan” by Vinay Kamath, 2018)
These are just two samples that show Ratan Tata was a truly great human being, apart from being one of the most successful business leaders of India. The outpouring of condolence messages from across the world on his passing away shows what a unique personality Ratan Tata was. He was literally a one in a billion kind. Every Indian will miss him for his humane side……
(The writer is retired IAS officer, TN cadre)
