Ratan Tata became the Chairman of the Tata Group in 1981 after serving as Chairman in charge of the Nelco division of the group. Tata is India's largest conglomerate and includes the brands Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Power, Indian Hotels, as well as other brands labeled under the Tata name.
Ratan Tata was born in 1937 in Mumbai, India in one of the richest families in the country. His great grandfather, Jamsedji Tata, was the founder of the Tata group and passed the power and inheritance down to his family. Ratan Tata grew up in a broken household, however, after his parents split in the mid-1940s and he and his brother were raised by their grandmother, Lady Navajbai.
Tata was a good student and studied hard at the Campion School in Mumbai followed by studies in architecture and structural engineering at Cornell University. He graduated with his bachelors degree in 1962 and joined the Tata Group in December of that same year. Tata's first job with the Group involved working with the Tata Steel division where he worked with the blue-collar employees shoveling stone and working with the furnaces.
Although this original job was physically difficult, it allowed Ratan Tata to gain a better understanding and appreciation for the business and he gradually began taking on more responsibility. In 1971, Tata became Director-in-Charge of the National Radio & Electronics Company Limited (Nelco) in order to help its struggling finances. Ratan Tata helped build a better consumer electronics division but the economic recession and union strikes prevented his vision from taking hold.
Tata was eventually moved to Empress Mills in 1977, a struggling textile mill within the Tata Group. He renewed the vision for the mill but the larger Tata Group was not in agreement with his advice. Instead, the mill was shut down and liquidated in 1986, to Tata's disappointment, and he was moved to the Tata Industries, another holding company.
In 1991, he took over as group chairman from J.R.D. Tata, pushing out the old guard and ushering in younger managers. Since then, he has been instrumental in reshaping the fortunes of the Tata Group. Today the Tata group has the largest market capitalization of any business house on the Indian Stock Market.
Under Ratan's guidance, Tata Consultancy Services went public. In 1998, Tata Motors introduced his brainchild, the Tata Indica. The renewed financial success helped bring the Tata Group to the New York Stock Exchange and gave the company even more international power and prestige. Ratan Tata continued to acquire different industries for the Tata Group, eventually purchasing the steel an aluminum producer, Corus Group as well as Jaguar and Land Rover brands from the Ford Company.
He was listed among the 25 most powerful people in business named by Fortune magazine in November 2007. Later on, he made it to the Time magazine's 2008 list of the World's 100 most influential people.
In 2008, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian decoration in India and another award by the UK India Business Council for his significant contribution to Indo-British business partnership. He has contributed to the UK economy by employing 50,000 people since he acquired the Corus Group, an Anglo-Dutch steel and aluminum producer and the Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor company. Singapore Government conferred its honorary citizenship on Ratan Tata in recognition of his abiding business relationship with the island nation and his contribution to the growth of high-tech sectors in Singapore.
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