On Ratan Tata

• In 1991 Tata, who had joined the family firm from university and worked initially on the shop floor, took over as chairman from his uncle, JRD, who had been in charge for more than half a century. This was also the year in which India opened its economy to the world and both country and company have grown hugely since, with Tata now operating in more than 80 countries. What began almost 150 years ago as a small textile and trading operation has become India’s most important industrial business, with operations stretching from steel and cars to power plants and IT outsourcing. This year it earned revenues of over $100bn, more than half of it abroad, while employing around 450,000 people.
• Tata himself stands out from other Indian tycoons: he lives an unpretentious life, holds only a small amount of the group’s stock, and conspicuously does not appear on the annual Forbes magazine list of Indian billionaires. Later this month he cedes control to Cyrus Mistry, his 44-year-old deputy, who will become the first non-Tata family member to run the group since it was founded in 1868 by Tata’s great-grandfather Jamsetji.
• Those who know him speak of his elaborate courtesy.
• The story goes that, one wet monsoon evening, Ratan Tata – head of India’s largest conglomerate, one of the world’s most influential industrialists and a keen dog-lover – decreed that any strays outside the complex be allowed to shelter. Some have never left. I’m told later that their future in Tata’s lobby is secure, even after the man who granted them residency departs.
  
  
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