Ratan Naval Tata (born 28 December 1937) is an Indian industrialist, philanthropist and former chairman of Tata Sons. He was also the chairman of the Tata group from 1990 to 2012 and then interim chairman from October 2016 to February 2017 and continues to head its charitable trusts. He is the recipient of two of India's highest civilian awards, the Padma Vibhushan (2008) and the Padma Bhushan (2000). Born in 1937, he is a descendant of the Tata family, and the son of Naval Tata, who was later adopted by Ratanji Tata, the son of Jamsetji Tata, the founder of the Tata group.He studied architecture and Harvard Business at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, where he earned a B.S. (1962) did in architecture before returning to work in India. He gained experience in several businesses of the Tata Group and was named Director-in-Charge (1971) of one of them, the National Radio and Electronics Company. He joined their company in 1961, when he worked on the shop floor of Tata Steel, and was the clear successor to JRD Tata after retirement. In 1991 he took Tata Tea to acquire Tetley, Tata Motors to acquire Jaguar Land Rover, and Tata Steel to acquire Corus, in an effort to transform Tata from a largely India-focused conglomerate into a global business . After assuming leadership of the group, Tata aggressively sought to expand it, and increasingly focused on globalizing its businesses. In 2000, the group acquired London-based Tetley T for $431.3 million, and in 2004 it bought the truck-manufacturing operations of Daewoo Motors of South Korea for $102 million. In 2007, Tata Steel completed the largest corporate takeover by an Indian company when it acquired the giant Anglo-Dutch steel maker Corus Group for $11.3 billion. In 2008, Tata oversaw the purchase of the elite British car brands Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Company by Tata Motors. The $2.3 billion deal is the biggest ever acquisition by an Indian automotive firm. The following year the company launched the Tata Nano, a small rear-engined, pod-shaped vehicle with a starting price of around 100,000 Indian Rupees, or about $2,000. Although only a little over 10 feet (3 m) long and about 5 feet (1.5 m) wide, the highly popular "People's Car" can accommodate five adults and is, in Tata's words, "safe, economical, all-in-India and abroad." " Transport season for millions of middle- and low-income consumers. In December 2012, Tata retired as the chairman of the Tata Group. He briefly served as interim president after the removal of his successor, Cyrus Mistry, in October 2016. Tata returned to retirement in January 2017 when Natarajan Chandrasekaran was appointed Chairman of the Tata Group.
Early life
Ratan Tata was born on 28 December 1937 in Bombay, now Mumbai, and is the son of Naval Tata (born in Surat). His biological maternal grandmother was the sister of Hirabai Tata, wife of group founder Jamsetji Tata. His biological grandfather, Hormusji Tata, was from the wider Tata family; Ratan was therefore a Tata by birth. Parents Naval and Sonu separated in 1948 when Ratan was 10 years old, and he was later raised by Sir Ratanji Tata, the widow of his grandmother, Nawazbai Tata, who formally named him J.N. Petit was adopted through a Parsi orphanage. She has a half-brother, Noel Tata (from Navy Tata's second marriage to Simone Tata), with whom she was raised. His first language is Gujarati. He attended Campion School, Mumbai until 8th grade, followed by Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai and Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, and in 1955, graduated from Riverdale Country School in New York City. In 1959, he received a degree in architecture from Cornell University, and in 1975, attended Harvard Business School's seven-week advanced management program—an institution he has since thriving. Promoted to management during the 1970s, Ratan achieved initial success by turning around the group company National Radio and Electronics (NELCO), only to see it collapse during an economic downturn. In 1991, JRD Tata stepped down as chairman of Tata Sons, naming him his successor. When he settled into the new role, he faced stiff resistance from the heads of several companies, some of whom had spent decades in their respective companies and became very powerful and influential because of the freedom to operate under JRD Tata. went. He began to change them by setting a retirement age, and then reporting operations at the group office to individual companies, each contributing some of their profits to building and using the Tata Group's brand. Innovation was given priority and young talent was inducted and given responsibilities. Under his leadership, the overlapping operations in the group companies were streamlined into a coordinated whole, with the salt-to-software conglomerate abandoning unrelated businesses to take on globalization. During the 21 years he led the Tata Group, revenues grew more than 40 times, and profits grew more than 50 times. While the group's sales as a whole came from goods after he took over, the majority of sales came from brands when he left. He boldly got Tata Tea to acquire Tetley, Tata Motors to acquire Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Steel to acquire Corus. It transformed Tata from a largely India-focused conglomerate into a global business, with over 65% of revenues coming from operations and sales in over 100 countries. He conceptualized the Tata Nano car. In 2015, he explained in an interview for Harvard Business School's Emerging Markets Project, the development of the Tata Nano was significant as it helped put cars at a price-point within the reach of the average Indian consumer. Ratan Tata resigned from his executive powers at the Tata Group on 28 December 2012 at the age of 75 and the Board of Directors and Legal Division withdrew from appointing Cyrus Mistry as the successor of Pallonji Mistry's 44-year-old son of Shapoorji Pallonji Group. refused. The largest individual shareholder of the group and related by marriage. On October 2016, Cyrus Mistry was removed from the post of chairman of Tata Sons and Ratan Tata was made interim chairman. The decision went through intense media scrutiny that scrutinized the root causes of the abrupt removal of several people and the resulting crisis. A selection committee was formed to find the successor. The selection committee included Mr Tata, TVS Group chief Venu Srinivasan, Bain Capital's Amit Chandra, former diplomat Ronen Sen and Lord Kumar Bhattacharya. All of them, except Mr. Bhattacharya, were on the board of Tata Sons. On 12 January 2017, Natarajan Chandrasekaran was named as the chairman of Tata Sons, a role he assumed in February 2017. Tata invested personal savings in Snapdeal, one of India's leading e-commerce websites. and in January 2016, Teabox, an online premium Indian tea seller, and CashKaro.com, a discount coupon and cash-back website. He has made small investments in both early and late-stage companies in India, such as Rs 0.95 crore in Ola Cabs. In April 2015, it was reported that Tata had acquired a stake in Chinese smartphone startup Xiaomi. In 2016, he invested in Nestway, an online portal to find fully furnished flats for bachelors, which later acquired Zenify to launch the family rental segment and online pet care portal, Dogspot. Tata Motors rolled out the first batch of Tigor Electric Vehicles from its Sanand Plant in Gujarat, regarding which Ratan Tata said, "Tigor indicates a willingness to fast-forward India's electric dream. The government has set an ambitious target to have only electric cars by 2030."
Tata family
Tata family, family of Indian industrialists and philanthropists who founded ironworks and steelworks, cotton mills, and hydroelectric power plants that proved crucial to India’s industrial development.The Tata were a Parsi priestly family who originally came from the former Baroda state (now Gujarat). The founder of the family’s fortunes was Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (born March 3, 1839, Navsari [India]—died May 19, 1904, Bad Nauheim, Germany). After an education at Elphinstone College in Bombay (Mumbai), he joined his father’s export trading firm in 1858 and helped establish branches of the company in Japan, China, Europe, and the United States. In 1872 he concentrated on cotton manufacturing, founding mills at Nagpur in 1877 and, later, at Bombay and Coorla. His enterprises were noted for efficiency, for improved labour-protection policies, and for the introduction of finer grades of fibre. He also introduced the production of raw silk to India and planned for the Bombay-area hydroelectric power plants that became the Tata Power companies after his death.Tata began organizing India’s first large-scale ironworks in 1901, and these were incorporated in 1907 as Tata Iron and Steel Company. Under the direction of his sons, Sir Dorabji Jamsetji Tata (1859–1932) and Sir Ratanji Tata (1871–1932), the Tata Iron and Steel Company became the largest privately owned steelmaker in India and the nucleus of a group of companies producing not only textiles, steel, and hydroelectric power but also chemicals, agricultural equipment, trucks, locomotives, and cement. The family’s industrial facilities were concentrated in the city of Jamshedpur, in Bihar state.In 1898 Tata donated land for a research institute that was later founded by his sons as the Indian Institute of Science, at Bangalore (Bengaluru). The Tata family went on to become perhaps the most important private funder of technical education and scientific research in India.Upon the death of Sir Dorabji in 1932, Sir Naoroji Saklatvala, one of the founder’s nephews, became chairman of the Tata Group. On his death in 1938, Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata (1904–93), whose father, R.D. Tata, had been a cousin and partner of the founder, became chairman. J.R.D. Tata founded Tata Airlines (1932), which was nationalized in 1953 and split up to form India’s chief domestic and international air carriers: Indian Airlines Corporation and Air-India, respectively. By the late 1950s the Tata Group controlled the largest single aggregation of Indian industry. J.R.D. Tata was succeeded as chairman by his nephew, Ratan Tata, in 1991. Ratan aggressively sought to expand the Tata Group, acquiring such companies as the London-based Tetley Tea (2000) and the Anglo-Dutch steel manufacturer Corus Group (2007). In 2008 he oversaw Tata Motors’ purchase of the elite British car brands Jaguar and Land Rover from the Ford Motor Company. In 2012 Ratan retired as chairman and was succeeded by Cyrus Mistry. In October 2016 Mistry was abruptly dismissed, and Ratan took over as interim chairman; media reports indicated that conflicts over business strategy were the reason for Mistry’s ouster. In January 2017 Natarajan Chandrasekaran was appointed as the new chairman of the Tata Group.
Tata Sons vs. Cyrus Mistry
In one of the most dramatic developments in the recent past, the board of directors of Tata Group on 24 October 2016 voted for the removal of its chairman Cyrus Mistry with immediate effect and made Ratan Tata the interim chairman, and in February 2017, Mistry was removed as a director for Tata Sons. The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) had decided in December 2019 that the removal of Cyrus Mistry as the Chairman of Tata Sons was illegal and that he should be reinstated. India's Supreme Court heard an appeal by the $111-billion conglomerate to quash the NCLAT order that directed the Tata group to rehire the man it fired as chairman. Ratan Tata is personally leading the charge in the case, and filed a separate petition challenging the ruling in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has stayed the NCLAT order that allowed Cyrus Mistry to be reinstated as Tata Sons chairman in January 2020.However the Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of Cyrus Mistry.
Philanthropy
Tata is a supporter of education, medicine and rural development, and considered a leading philanthropist in India. Tata supported University of New South Wales Faculty of Engineering to develop capacitive deionization to provide improved water for challenged areas.Tata Hall at the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), opened in November 2018, houses facilities for the biological and physical sciences and is the home of the Tata Institute for Genetics and Society. The Tata Institute for Genetics and Society is a binational institution that coordinates research between UC San Diego and research operations in India to assist in societal and infrastructure development in the area of combating vector-borne diseases. Tata Hall is named in recognition of a generous $70 million gift from Tata Trusts.Tata Education and Development Trust, a philanthropic affiliate of Tata Group, endowed a $28 million Tata Scholarship Fund that will allow Cornell University to provide financial aid to undergraduate students from India. The scholarship fund will support approximately 20 scholars at any given time and will ensure that the very best Indian students have access to Cornell, regardless of their financial circumstances. The scholarship will be awarded annually; recipients will receive the scholarship for the duration of their undergraduate study at Cornell.In 2010, Tata Group companies and Tata charities donated $50 million for the construction of an executive center at Harvard Business School (HBS). The executive center has been named Tata Hall, after Ratan Tata (AMP '75), chairman emeritus of Tata Sons. The total construction costs have been estimated at $100 million. Tata Hall is located in the northeast corner of the HBS campus, and is devoted to the Harvard Business School's mid-career Executive Education program. It is seven stories tall, and about 155,000 gross square feet. It houses approximately 180 bedrooms, in addition to academic and multi-purpose spaces.Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has given the largest ever donation by a company to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) for a facility to research in cognitive systems and autonomous vehicles. TCS donated $35 million for this grand 48,000 square-foot building that is called TCS Hall.In 2014, Tata Group endowed the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and formed the Tata Center for Technology and Design (TCTD) to develop design and engineering principles suited to the needs of people and communities with limited resources. They gave ?950 million to the institute which was the largest ever donation received in its history.Tata Trusts under the Chairmanship of Ratan Tata provided a grant of ?750 million to the Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science to study mechanisms underlying the cause of Alzheimer's disease and to evolve methods for its early diagnosis and treatment. This grant was to be spread over 5 years starting in 2014.Tata Group, under the leadership of Ratan Tata formed the MIT Tata Center of Technology and Design at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a mission to address the challenges of resource-constrained communities, with an initial focus on India.
Board memberships and affiliations
He was the interim chairman of Tata Sons. He continues to head the main two Tata trusts Sir Dorabji Tata and Allied Trusts and Sir Ratan Tata Trust and their allied trusts, with a combined stake of 66% in Tata Sons, Tata group's holding company.He has served in various capacities in organizations in India and abroad. He is a member of Prime Minister's 'Council on Trade and Industry' and the 'National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council'. He is on the jury panel of Pritzker Architecture Prize– considered to be one of the world's premier architecture prizes.He is a director on the boards of Alcoa Inc., Mondelez International and Board of Governors of the East–West Center. He is also a member of the board of trustees of University of Southern California, Harvard Business School Board of Dean's Advisors, X Prizeand Cornell University. He is a member on the board of International Advisory Council at Bocconi University He is also a member of the Harvard Business School India Advisory Board (IAB) since 2006 and previously a member of the Harvard Business School Asia-Pacific Advisory Board (APAB) 2001–2006.In October 2016, Tata Sons removed Cyrus Mistry as its chairman, nearly 4 years after he took over the reins of the over $100 billion conglomerate, Ratan Tata made a comeback, taking over the company's interim boss for 4 months. On 12 January 2017, Natarajan Chandrasekaran was named as the chairman of Tata Sons, a role he assumed in February 2017.
