Tata, Ratan

▪ 2009

Ratan Naval Tata 

born Dec. 28, 1937, Bombay [now Mumbai], India

 Indian business mogul Ratan Tata, chairman of the privately owned Tata Group, a Mumbai-based conglomerate of nearly 100 companies, made international headlines in 2008 with some of the year's most ambitious moves in the automotive industry. On January 10 Tata Motors officially launched the Nano, a tiny rear-engined, pod-shaped vehicle that was expected to sell for 100,000 Indian rupees, or about $2,500. Although only slightly more than 3 m (10 ft) long and about 1.5 m (5 ft) wide, the highly touted “People's Car” could seat up to five adults and, in Tata's words, would provide a “safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport” to millions of middle- and lower-income consumers both in India and abroad. Tata had his eye on the luxury auto market as well, announcing on March 26 that Tata Motors had agreed to purchase the elite British car brands Jaguar and Land Rover from the Ford Motor Co. The $2.3 billion deal, completed in early June, marked the largest-ever acquisition by an Indian automotive firm. The global financial crisis and plummeting car sales, however, delayed the Nano's introduction and forced Tata to seek new investors.

      Tata was a member of a prominent family of Indian industrialists and philanthropists. He was educated at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., where he earned a B.S. (1962) in architecture before returning to work in India. He gained experience in a number of Tata Group businesses and was named director in charge (1971) of one of them, the National Radio and Electronics Co. He became chairman of Tata Industries a decade later and in 1991 succeeded his uncle, J.R.D. Tata, as chairman of the Tata Group.

      Upon assuming leadership of the conglomerate, Tata aggressively sought to expand it, and increasingly he focused on globalizing its businesses. In 2000 the group acquired London-based Tetley Tea for $431.3 million, and in 2004 it purchased the truck-manufacturing operations of South Korea's Daewoo Motors for $102 million. In 2007 Tata Steel completed the biggest corporate takeover by an Indian company when it acquired the giant Anglo-Dutch steel manufacturer Corus Group for $11.3 billion.

      Among many other honours accorded him during his career, Tata received the Padma Bhushan, one of India's most distinguished civilian awards, in 2000. Fortune magazine included him on its 2007 list of the 25 most powerful people in business, and in 2008 Time magazine listed him among the 100 most influential people in the world. Although Tata had talked of the possibility of his stepping down from the chairmanship of the Tata Group following the launch of the Nano, he was not officially scheduled to retire until 2012.

Sherman Hollar

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