Ratan Tata, one of India’s most influential and admired tycoons who transformed his family’s Tata Group conglomerate into a multinational company with world-famous brands, died on Wednesday in Mumbai. did. He was 86 years old.
Tata Group announced his passing. statementthe cause has not been identified. He was being treated in the hospital’s emergency room, Reuters reported.
During his 21 years as chairman and chief executive officer from 1991 to 2012, Tata Group’s profits increased 50 times, with most of the revenue coming from famous Tata products such as Jaguar and Land Rover cars and Tetley tea. This was due to overseas sales.
Despite the conglomerate’s international activities, under Tata’s leadership its domestic influence remained greater than ever. For middle-class Indians, it was almost impossible to go through a day without buying Tata products and services. They wake up with Tata tea, surf the internet on Tata Photon, watch Tata Sky programs on TV, ride Tata taxis, drive their own Tata cars and countless cars made of Tata steel. I have used so many products.
In the 2010s, other family-run business groups matched or surpassed the Tata Group in terms of revenue and valuation. However, none of the rising powers enjoyed the kind of public recognition that Mr. Tata had. Mr. Tata was known for plowing much of his wealth into philanthropy and investing in start-up businesses run by cash-strapped young entrepreneurs.
The Tata Group’s unusual ownership structure added to Mr. Tata’s appeal. The parent company is Tata Sons Private Company. Ltd. held a majority stake and was itself two-thirds owned by a charitable trust donated by members of the Tata family.
Tata shunned the limelight and projected a public image as a shy loner, a man who had never married or had children. However, towards the end of his career, he became embroiled in a major controversy when he persuaded the Tata board to fire his hand-picked successor. The ensuing legal dispute took years to resolve and constantly attracted media attention.
Ratan Naval Tata was born on December 28, 1937 in British-era Bombay, now Mumbai. His family belongs to the Parsi ethnic community, whose Zoroastrian ancestors fled persecution in Persia centuries ago and sought refuge in India. Mr. Tata became a leader in that community.
The Tata family made their fortune in the opium trade with China and textile factories in the 19th century. By the time Mr. Ratan’s father, Naval Tata, became vice chairman of the family business, the Tata group was well-established with a number of manufacturing and commercial enterprises.
Navy Tata married his cousin Sooni Tata, but they separated when Ratan and his younger brother Jimmy were still children. The two boys were adopted and raised by their wealthy paternal grandmother.
“Although I had a happy childhood, my brother and I faced considerable turbulence and personal discomfort as we grew up due to our parents’ divorce, which was not as common then as it is today. ” he said. Tata reflected in a three-part Facebook interview posted in 2020.
He grew up in a white Baroque Revival building known as the Tata Palace in Mumbai, had 50 servants, and drove to school in a Rolls Royce. He was sent to the United States to attend high school at Riverdale Country School in New York City. He graduated from Cornell University with a degree in architecture and then took management courses at Harvard Business School.
Mr. Tata maintained a restrained social life. He devoted much of his free time to driving sports cars, flying airplanes, and racing speedboats from the port near his apartment in Mumbai.
His survivors include his stepmother, Simone; his younger brother Jimmy; half-brother Noel; and two half-sisters, Shireen and Deanna Jesyboi.
Mr. Tata joined the family business in 1962 and initially worked on the Tata Steel manufacturing floor. After that, he was steadily promoted through managerial positions. His only setback was the conglomerate’s struggling electronics subsidiary. Although the company was initially successful in rebuilding itself, it went bankrupt due to the economic downturn. A few years later, the subsidiary Nelco became profitable again, especially in the field of satellite communications.
In 1991, JRD Tata stepped down after half a century as chairman of Tata Sons and the Tata Group, handing over leadership of the conglomerate to Ratan Tata, a separate arm of the Tata family.
This succession was strongly opposed by other Tata family members and executives. “JRD was bludgeoned with nepotism and I was branded as the wrong choice,” Tata said in a Facebook interview.
Mr. Tata quelled resistance and strengthened his leadership by forcing senior Tata executives into retirement (softening the blow with generous pensions), making subsidiaries report to group offices, and embarking on globalization of the family business. did.
He took advantage of rising nationalism by pursuing so-called “reverse colonialism” – the acquisition of British-based brand companies such as Jaguar, Tetley and Corus Steel.
In a 2008 article, The Guardian wrote, “Britain has become an ‘insourcing’ hub for Ratan Tata, a base for Indian multinationals’ overseas operations.”
In another popular move, in 2008, Tata led the production of the Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest car, priced at $2,200 and within reach of the average middle-class Indian consumer.
Mr. Tata, who turned 75 in 2012, relinquished his executive role at the Tata Group. In what was supposed to be a smooth transition, he named his successor Cyrus Mistry, 44, whose family was the conglomerate’s largest individual shareholder.
Instead, the succession became the highest-profile corporate dispute in India’s recent history. As was the case two decades ago when Ratan Tata was named as the group’s heir, other Tata family members and board members opposed Mistry’s selection. However, with support from Ratan Tata, Mistry won.
But over the next few years, tensions grew between Mr. Mistry and Mr. Tata, who still wielded great influence as chairman of the Tata Trusts, which controlled the majority of the conglomerate’s shares. Mr. Mistry sold several businesses backed by Mr. Tata, and Mr. Tata became dissatisfied with Mr. Mistry’s handling of the group’s international steel and telecommunications businesses.
In October 2016, less than four years after he was appointed to head the Tata conglomerate, Mistry was removed by the Tata board with the full support of Ratan Tata. Mr. Tata returned to the position of chairman of the conglomerate until a successor was appointed by the board in February 2017.
But Mistry did not remain silent. He sued the Tata Group, claiming that his exclusion was illegal. His claims that the board fostered nepotism, ignored minority shareholders and condoned fraud were often the subject of sensational media coverage over the next five years.
Initially, the court ruled in Mistry’s favor. But in 2021, India’s Supreme Court finally upheld the legality of Mistry’s firing, bringing the saga to a close.
The controversy diverted attention from Mr. Tata’s extensive philanthropy. In India, much of his private wealth was spent on educational, medical, and agricultural projects for poor Indians. In the United States, he and Tata Trusts have donated millions of dollars to several universities, including his alma mater Cornell University and Harvard Business School, for research facilities and scholarship programs that bear Tata’s name. did.
Since its founding in 1868 by founder Jamsetsi Tata, business and philanthropy have been at the heart of the Tata empire. Jamsetsi’s factory was one of the first in the world to invest heavily in the welfare of its employees, and he and his two sons left most of their fortune and company shares in a charitable trust.
Mr. Tata has backed more than 50 Indian startups, including e-commerce and digital payment platforms and online underwear retailers. But his favorite was a start-up called Goodfellas, which promoted friendships between older and younger Indians in business and other professions.
At the launch of Goodfellas in Mumbai in 2022, he told a cross-generational audience: “You don’t really care about getting older until you’re older, but you realize it’s a difficult world.”
Shalini Venugopal Bhagat and Bernard Mokam contributed reporting.
