Ratan Tata, an entrepreneur who passed away at the age of 86, is credited with making India’s Tata Group a well-known corporation with a portfolio spanning from sports cars to software.
He was a painfully shy scholar who had been raised as an engineer and was employed in the United States when his mother asked him to return home and work for the towering family business.
He began working on the factory floor close to blast furnaces in 1962, working in a hostel for interns.
In a unique interview, he remarked,” It was sad at that time, but if I look again, it’s been a very interesting experience. I’ve worked with the employees for years.
Tata seized control of the home business in 1991, initiating a wave of extreme free-market reforms that the American government sparked.
The salt-to-steel company expanded its global footprint to contain European luxury brands like Jaguar and Land Rover during his 21 years in charge.
His lofty ambitions for the party, which was established under British colonial rule, first attracted older board members, he claimed, which led to the establishment of a company retirement age policy.
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Born in Bombay, now Mumbai, in 1937, the Cornell University-educated Tata was known for his willingness to take risks.
At a time when several people were hesitant to invest in tech companies, he took the conglomerate’s software outsourcing company Tata Consultancy Services people.
That same year, he declared he wanted Tata Group to” spread its wings much beyond India” and be “at house in the world”- prompting a world tour to get up big brands, including Britain’s Tetley Tea and Anglo-Dutch steel firm Corus.
Tata’s 2008 decision to purchase the loss-making Jaguar and Land Rover models for US$ 2.3 billion put him on the chart.
He had less victory with the$ 13 billion Corus acquisition because of the decline in demand for European material as a result of Chinese competition.
And his animal job Tata Nano, billed as the world’s cheapest vehicles, stuttered to a halt after finding some takers in status-conscious India, where customers flinched at owning a so-called “poor man’s car”.
But the losses paled before his triumphs, which saw the Tata Group’s revenues rise from around US$ 6 billion to$ 100 billion, as the company’s reach grew to more than 100 countries.