India’s Ratan Tata, the man who knew how to ‘think big and bold’

A greying, slightly bent man asked for a table for two at the Sea Lounge, the iconic coffee shop at the Taj Hotels’&nbsp, flagship hotel in Mumbai, a few years ago. Customers were throbbing in the restaurant as they watched the sun set over the Arabian Sea.

There were no free tables, could he give his name for the waitlist? The young hostess asked. Before hotel staff could search for the chairman emeritus of the Tata Group, which also owns Taj Hotels, the man spelled “Ratan Tata” and disappeared into the hotel’s corridors.

Tata, who passed away on Wednesday in Mumbai, was admired for his humility as well as his expansive vision, which led to the group’s more than $ 128 billion in revenue in 2022 and the ownership of well-known brands like Tetley Tea and Jaguar Land Rover.

The 86-year-old was hailed as one of India’s most adored people because of his leadership of Indian businesses, including those operating overseas, making it a symbol of the newly liberal Indian economy.

Soon after Tata’s passing in a Mumbai hospital, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared her “a visionary business leader, a compassionate soul, and an extraordinary human being.”

Tata took over the group’s reins in 1991, just as India began shedding its socialist-era protectionist policies. He set about transforming the more than century-old industrial group into an innovative, cost and labour-efficient, global conglomerate.

Ravi Kant, who was Tata Motors’ chief executive and then vice chairman up until 2014, said, “I think his legacy will be how to think big and bold. He might have an idea of it, but it might not even be there.

When he asked CEAT group chairman Harsh Goenka for advice, he said that the paths to take frequently could be long and laborious, but those would be the ones worth taking. Goenka recalled to Al Jazeera that Goenka once said to him when he asked for advice.

Indeed, Tata navigated India’s fractious politics, its regulatory hurdles and protectionist-era mindsets to chart a new course for the group.

‘ Trying years ‘

At 54, Tata struggled to put his stamp on the fractious and loosely held group of companies when he was appointed chairman of the group. &nbsp,

After studying architecture at Cornell University, he joined Tata Steel in Jamshedpur, one of the flagship units, as a junior executive. Later, he had mixed success at the group’s electronics venture, National Radio and Electronics (Nelco), and Empress Mills.

“Those were trying years, but he was gentle, soft-spoken and he stayed that way even later”, said Jehangir Jehangir, who was Tata’s executive assistant at Nelco.

It meant the group’s senior company heads, such as Tata Steel’s Russi Mody and Indian Hotels ‘ Ajit Kerkar, did not necessarily adhere to Tata in the early years. Each operated their business independently, collecting art from company accounts and flying on company jets for private, individual trips.

“They saw him]Tata] as a bacha]a kid]”, Jehangir recalled.

Tata Sons, the group holding company, had stakes in many group companies as low as 3 percent or 13 percent, opening them up to hostile takeovers. Tata began securing more control of the business without formally limiting his smallholding. He also increased Tata Sons’ shareholding in group companies, established a retirement age of 75, which led to Mody’s departure, and led a dramatic boardroom ouster of Kerkar.

‘ Think global ‘

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh started reviving India’s long-held Licence Raj in 1991, which stifled competition and required domestic partners from foreign businesses. Numerous Indian businesses pleaded for protection from foreign competition.

But Tata began telling executives the opposite. “We shouldn’t limit our thinking to India,” he said. We should think globally”, said a former senior Tata group executive, who had worked closely with Tata and did not want to be named. “Year after year, I remember writing in his annual reports – think global”.

This perspective enabled group companies to recover from the early 2000s’ economic slump in India.

“We started buying coal globally rather than just mining coal]domestically], as we had done”, said the Tata group executive about Tata Steel. Tata Motors began making dyes for Jaguar, Ford and Toyota. In a few years, Kant recalled about Tata Motors, “We went from a 500 crore rupees loss to a 500 crore rupees profit.”

It also set the stage for the group’s global acquisitions. In 2000, Tata Tea acquired the much-loved British tea brand Tetley for $431m, bringing it to global prominence. But Tata had just begun. Tata Motors paid $ 102 million to acquire South Korean Daewoo Motors’ commercial vehicle division in 2004.

And then, in 2007, Tata Steel acquired the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, in what was one of the biggest acquisitions in its time. Making the acquisition a formidable challenge because the British government did not raise money for it in the UK. But Tata’s mind was set. “By then, we had relationships with international bankers, and we were able to raise $10-12bn on our own”, said the former Tata executive.

Months later, Tata Motors acquired the celebrated but ailing British carmaker, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), from Ford Motors. “When we saw the strengths of Tata Motors and the strengths of JLR, we thought we were on to something big”, Kant, who was then the chief executive of Tata Motors, recalled.

In a few years, Tata and other company executives worked to restore the company’s profitability by developing new models and efficient manufacturing. CEAT’s Goenka recalls thinking that Ratan Tata had purchased the Jaguar.

Within months, the waters turned choppy for the group. The Corus acquisition became challenging as a result of the global financial crisis in 2008, which caused a decline in steel demand.

One of Tata’s great dreams was to make the world’s least expensive car at Tata Motors. Jehangir said, “His favorite part of the job was to study car design at Tata Motors,” adding, “.

He was actively involved in the car’s development. However, the project had to be abruptly abandoned in the middle of growing protests over the purchase of land to build the manufacturing plant in West Bengal state. In response to the interreligious riots in his state of 2002, which had damaged his reputation, Tata Motors made the decision to relocate its plant to Sanand in Gujarat in October 2008.

Tata was determined to meet the launch dates while the plant was being moved across the nation.

“We had one factory being dismantled, one being set up and one producing the car”, Tata Motors ‘ Kant recalled. “I don’t think it has ever been done before”.

At the launch of the Tata Nano in March 2009, Tata said, “A promise is a promise”. He had met his launch date and the 100, 000-rupee ($2, 000 then) price tag. In the end, the car was not a success and had to be discontinued.

‘Formidable’

In 2009, India’s Open Magazine leaked tapes of Tata talking to Nira Radia about obtaining telecom licenses for the telecom company owned by the group. He was uninvited about ministers and the auction process on the recordings.

Tata requested an injunction against the courts to stop the tapes from spreading further. Editor Manu Joseph recalled in a piece for HuffPost that Open’s editors contacted dozens of attorneys for advice on the case, but each “would convey his regrets because he did not want to take on Ratan Tata.”

“I am certain of one obvious quality of Ratan Tata, which is that he is formidable”, Joseph wrote in the 2016 piece.

Its quality also served as a reminder of his conflict with Cyrus Mistry, the man he had chosen. Tata had retired in 2012, leaving the group in Mistry’s hands. However, the two’s ties soon started to deteriorate, and N Chandrasekaran was appointed group chairman in 2017 by an executive search team. He had been the chief executive of the group’s software services business, Tata Consultancy Services.

Charitable work

Increasingly frail, Tata switched his focus to charitable work through Tata Trusts, which holds nearly two-thirds of the shares of Tata Sons, and correspondingly, the group. In 2018, he called Jehangir, his former executive assistant, and asked him to join the board of Tata Trusts.

“He wanted to keep up the values and the culture of the group”, Jehangir recalled. When he is not present, “he really wanted the group’s culture to stay.”

Tata has mostly shied away from the public over the past few years. He assisted research at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development in developing a network of cancer hospitals and a pet hospital.

Over the past few months, Jan Royall, the director of Somerville College, where the center is located, met Tata several times online, including when they were unable to meet in person.

He always displayed deep knowledge of cutting-edge research in this area across a range of disciplines, Royall recalled. “He was particularly interested in research on health and technology. Even through his last months, Tata kept up their meetings. He was both a visionary leader and a genuine academic at heart.

Tata was never married and had no children. He was incredibly fond of dogs. Tata had once responded that it was building a swimming pool for his dogs when Goenka inquired what his greatest luxury was.

Many young people idolized him because of his frugal lifestyle and lofty corporate goals.

Rumors about his ailing health had been circulating in the city days before he was admitted to Breach Candy Hospital in south Mumbai. The ever-self-effacing Tata had tweeted that he was fine, just going through regular medical checkups. “Thank you for thinking of me”, he had tweeted.

Source: Aljazeera