Ratan Tata’s history and success story in Tata Group. Ratan Tata was born on 28th December, 1937 in Mumbai. His family was one of the richest families, and his great grandfather Jamshed Tata, founder of the Tata group. Ratan Tata was brought up by his grandmother, Lady Navajbai, in Tata Palace, as his parents Naval Tata and Sooni Commissariat, separated when he was 10, and he had a disturbed childhood. He was raised with his half-brother, Noel Tata. Ratan Tata was educated in architecture and structural engineering at Cornell University, New York, and later pursued management courses at Harvard University. He worked in a number of Tata Group businesses to gain experience. His first job was at Tata Steel in Jamshedpur, and he was appointed as the Director in Charge of the National Radio and Electronics Company Limited in 1971, and he turned NELCO into a successful company. After gaining lot of experience, Tata became the Chairman of Tata Industries, and in 1991, he succeeded his uncle J.R.D. as Chairman of the Tata Group.
After taking over the leadership, Tata started to expand it as a global business. Ratan Tata’s history and success started to take a turn when he settled down as the Chairman. He faced confrontation from the heads of many companies who had spent decades in the company and had started to become powerful and more influential because of the absence of J.R.D. He started to replace them by setting a retirement age and then made individual companies report everything to the head office and made everyone contribute some of their profit to build the brand of Tata Group. Priority was given to innovative minds, and younger ones were given a chance to work. During his period as chairman for 21 years, revenues grew over 40 times greater and profits up to 50 times. His bold decision to get Tata Tea acquired by Tetley, Tata Motors acquired Jaguar Land Rover, and Tata Steel acquired Corus. All of these helped to turn the Tata Group from an Indian-centric group into a global business, with over 65% of revenues coming from operations and sales in over 100 countries. He also actualized the Tata Nano car, the development of the Tata Nano were momentous because it attained the point reach of the average Indian customer . During his period, the company launched the “Indica”, the first truly Indian car. He also planned to provide drinking water at an affordable cost, by helping the designers to develop efficient water purifiers.
Ratan Tata resigned his executive powers in the Tata group on December 28, 2012, at the age of 75, and the Board of Directors and Legal Division refused to appoint Cyrus Mistry as the successor to Pallonji Mistry of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, the Tata group’s largest individual shareholder. On October 24, 2016, Cyrus Mistry was removed as the chairman of Tata Sons and Ratan Tata was made interim chairman. Tata Group appointed a selection committee to find a successor. Going into his personal life, he once said that he came close to getting married four times, and each time he backed off in fear for one reason or another. He said that he loved one girl in Los Angeles while he was working there, but as the parents of the girl didn’t allow her to be with Ratan Tata, he had to come back to take care of his commitments, and he never got married.
Success is the best form of revenge.
Ratan Tata’s history and success turned its failure into its success. When Tata Indica didn’t yield the results they sought, the group wanted to sell the car division to Ford company. At the meeting with Bill Ford, Chairman of Ford, Ratan Tata was humiliated by the words of Bill, especially when he was told that Tata Motors didn’t know anything about cars and Ford was doing a favor to Tata. Ratan Tata got humiliated and decided not to sell the car division. He turned all his anger into hard work and worked harder and harder. After 9 years, the ball came to Ratan Tata’s court, and now Ford faced a financial breakdown, so Ratan Tata took over the Jaguar and Land Rover brands for $2.3 billion. Bill Ford thanked Tata for doing this favor. More than saying karma is a boomerang, it is the hard work that talks. The main success starts after this. Within a few years, JLR scored a tremendous victory and became the mainstay of Tata Motors’ financial gain. Tata Motors’ Land Rovers and Jaguars are among the world’s best-selling cars. This is one of the remarkable success of Ratan Tata.
Recently, Ratan Tata shared an emotional note that Air India has come back to its home again. After seven decades, it landed back in the hands of its founders again. Air India recently shared a message in twitter that read, “A warm welcome extended by Mr. Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus, Tata Sons, and Chairman Tata Trusts, to our passengers onboard Air India flights.” He said Air India, under the leadership of Mr. JRD Tata, at one time, gained the reputation of being one of the most prestigious airlines in the world. And Tata’s will have the opportunity to enjoy the image and reputation it enjoyed in earlier years.