Ratan Tata

Ratan Naval Tata
Born	28 December 1937 Surat, British India
Residence	Colaba, Mumbai[1]
Nationality	Indian
Ethnicity	Parsi
Alma mater	Cornell University Harvard Business School
Occupation	Chairman emeritus, Tata Sons Chairman, Tata Trusts
Religion	Zoroastrian
Relatives	Tata family
Awards	Padma Vibhushan (2008) Padma Bhushan (2000) HonFREng[2] (2012)

Ratan Naval Tata (born 28 December 1937) is an Indian businessman, investor, philanthropist and chairman emeritus of Tata Sons. He was the chairman of Tata Group, a Mumbai-based global business conglomerate from 1991 till 2012, and continues to head its charitable trusts.^[3][4]

Early life

Ratan Tata is the son of Naval Tata, who had been adopted from J. N. Petit Parsi Orphanage by Navajbai Tata. His parents Naval and Sonoo separated in the mid-1940s when he was ten and his younger brother, Jimmy, was seven years old. Both he and his brother were raised by their grandmother Navajbai Tata.^[5] He has a step brother Noel Tata from Naval Tata's second marriage to Simone Tata. He schooled in Mumbai, at the Campion School and later at the Cathedral and John Connon School, for secondary education.^[6] He did B.S. in architecture with structural engineering from Cornell University in 1962, and the Advanced Management Program from Harvard Business School in 1975.^[7]

Career

Tata began his career in the Tata group in 1961. He started on the shop floor of Tata Steel, shovelling limestone and handling the blast furnace.^[8] He could not turn around group companies, NELCO and Empress Mills, which he was given charge of in the 70s.^[9][10] In 1991, J. R. D. Tata stepped down as chairman of Tata Sons, naming him his successor. When he settled down into the new role, he faced stiff resistance from many company heads some of who had spent decades in their respective companies and rose to become very powerful and influential due to the freedom to operate under JRD Tata. He began replacing them by setting a retirement age, and then made individual companies report operationally to the group office and made each contribute some of their profit to build and use the Tata group brand. Innovation was given priority and younger talent was infused and given responsibilities.^[11] Under his stewardship, overlapping operations in group companies were streamlined into a synergised whole,^[12] with the salt-to-software group exiting unrelated businesses to take on the onslaught of globalisation.

During the 21 years he led the Tata Group, revenues grew over 40 times, and profit, over 50 times.^[9] Where sales of the group as a whole, overwhelmingly came from commodities when he took over, the majority sales came from brands when he exited.^[13][14] He boldly got Tata Tea to acquire Tetley, Tata Motors to acquire Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Steel to acquired Corus. All this turned Tata from a largely India-centric group into a global business, with over 65% revenues coming from operations and sales in over 100 countries.^[9][15] He conceptualised the Tata Nano car.^[11]

Ratan Tata relinquished all executive power in the Tata group on 28 December 2012, on turning 75, appointing as his successor, Cyrus Mistry, the 44-year-old son of Pallonji Mistry of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, the largest individual shareholder of the group and related by marriage.^[16][17]

Recently, he invested his personal savings in Snapdeal- one of India's leading e-commerce website and in Jan 2016 made an undisclosed funding in Teabox - an online store selling premium Indian Tea.^[18] Ratan Tata has been making small investments in both early and late stage companies in India. He has made INR 0.95 Cr in Ola Cabs^[19] and INR 1 Cr in Paytm.^[20] Tata is working closely with Jaguar Land Rover and some of the new models launched by the British marquee have several inputs from Tata.^[21] In April 2015, it was reported that Tata had acquired a stake in Chinese smartphone startup Xiaomi, with specific terms undisclosed.^[22]

Board memberships and affiliations

He is the Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons. He continues to head the main two Tata trusts Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and Sir Ratan Tata Trust and their allied Trusts, with a combined stake of 66% in Tata Sons, Tata group's holding company.

He has served in various capacities in organisations in India and abroad. He is a member of the 'Prime Minister's Council on Trade and Industry' and the 'National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council'. He is on the jury panel of Pritzker Architecture Prize^[23] – considered to be one of the world's premier architecture prizes.

He is a director on the boards of Alcoa Inc., Mondelez International^[24] and Board of Governors of the East-West Center. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of University of Southern California, Harvard Business School Board of Dean's Advisors, X Prize^[25] and Cornell University.

He is also a member of the Harvard Business School India Advisory Board (IAB) since 2006, a member of the Board of Directors of Pepperdine University, and previously a member of the Harvard Business School Asia-Pacific Advisory Board (APAB) 2001-2006.

Honours and awards

Ratan Tata received the Padma Vibhushan in 2008 and Padma Bhushan in 2000, the second and third highest civilian honours awarded by the Government of India.^[26]

The other notable awards are:

Year	Name	Awarding organisation	Ref.
2015	Sayaji Ratna Award	Baroda Management Association, Honoris Causa, HEC Paris	[27]
2015	Honorary Doctor of Automotive Engineering	Clemson University	[28]
2014	Honorary Doctor of Laws	York University, Canada	[29]
2014	Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (GBE)	United Kingdom Government	[30][31]
2014	Sayaji Ratna Award	Baroda Management Association	[32]
2014	Honorary Doctor of Business	Singapore Management University	[33]
2013	Honorary Doctorate	University of Amsterdam	[34]
2013	Honorary Doctor of Business Practice	Carnegie Mellon University	[35]
2013	Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year – Lifetime Achievement	Ernst & Young	[36]
2013	Transformational Leader of the Decade	Indian Affairs India Leadership Conclave 2013	[37]
2013	Foreign Associate	National Academy of Engineering	[38]
2012	Doctor of Business honoris causa	University of New South Wales	[39]
2012	Honorary Fellow[2]	The Royal Academy of Engineering[2]	[40]
2010	Business Leader of the Year	The Asian Awards.	[41]
2010	Business for Peace Award	Business for Peace Foundation	[42]
2010	Honorary Doctor of Laws	Pepperdine University	[43]
2010	Legend in Leadership Award	Yale University	[44]
2010	Oslo Business for Peace award	Business for Peace Foundation	[45]
2010	Hadrian Award	World Monuments Fund	[46]
2010	Honorary Doctor of Law	University of Cambridge	[47]
2009	Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic	Italy	[48]
2009	Life Time Contribution Award in Engineering for 2008	Indian National Academy of Engineering	[49]
2009	Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire	United Kingdom	[50]
2008	Inspired Leadership Award	The Performance Theatre	[51]
2008	Honorary Fellowship	The Institution of Engineering and Technology	[52]
2008	Honorary Citizen Award	Government of Singapore	[53] [54]
2008	Honorary Doctor of Science	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur.	[55]
2008	Honorary Doctor of Science	Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.	[56]
2008	Honorary Doctor of Law	University of Cambridge.	[57]
2008	Inspired Leadership Award	Inspired leadership award	[58]
2007	Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy	Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.	[59]
2007	Honorary Fellowship	The London School of Economics and Political Science	[60]
2006	Responsible Capitalism Award	FIRST	[61]
2006	Honorary Doctor of Science	Indian Institute of Technology Madras	[62]
2005	Honorary Doctor of Science	University of Warwick.	[63]
2005	International Distinguished Achievement Award	B'nai B'rith International	[64]
2004	Honorary Doctor of Technology	Asian Institute of Technology.	[65]
2004	Medal of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay	Government of Uruguay	[66]
2001	Honorary Doctor of Business Administration	Ohio State University	[67]

References

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External links

• Ratan Naval Tata's chairman profile at Tata Group
• Profile at The Guardian
• "Ratan Tata '59: The Cornell Story" on YouTube
• Interview on Charlie Rose
• Creating Emerging Markets Interview at the Harvard Business School