Latest revision as of 21:21, 18 December 2024

Ratan Tata

[edit] A profile

India Today

He remains India's most respected industrialist, passionately involved in new businesses despite stepping down as chairman of the Rs.6 lakh crore salt-to-software Tata Group in December 2012.

In June 2014 he took up the mantle of chief adviser to AirAsia India, a new venture the Malaysian airline has set up with Tata, and tied up with Singapore Airlines to launch Vistara, a new carrier, and invested in e-commerce firm Snapdeal and online jewellery retailer Bluestone in his personal capacity. As chairman of four philanthropic Tata trusts, he oversees the group's contribution to charity, where it offered Rs.310 crore for the underprivileged in 2012-13.

New power centre

South Mumbai's Bakhtawar building in Colaba, where Ratan Tata has set up his office.

Confession of the yearbb

That it was a mistake to pitch Nano as the world's cheapest car; it should have targeted the two-wheeler owner with "an all-weather, safe form of affordable transportation"pitch.

Must Love dogs

Known for being a dog-lover, he feeds strays in his Colaba neighbourhood regularly.

Ahead of the curve

"I hate to see corporations disappearing from the scene because someone has cashed out, because managers are unable to escape their comfort zones, or because boards have not been sufficiently nimble to change with the times."

[edit] Personal life

[edit] From his lecture in 2020

Bloomberg, ’Almost got married' after college, says Ratan Tata, February 13, 2020: The Times of India

Ratan Tata with his grandmother
(Ratan Tata with his grandmother Photo- Humans of Bombay-Facebook)
From: Bloomberg, ’Almost got married' after college, says Ratan Tata, February 13, 2020:The Times of India

NEW DELHI: Tata Sons chairman emeritus Ratan Tata has divulged details about his personal life and stated that he "fell in love and almost got married" after college. Speaking to 'Humans of Bombay' on Facebook, the Tata Trusts chairman recalled some of his life's moments and credited his grandmother for teaching him to retain dignity at all costs.

"I had a happy childhood, but as my brother and I got older, we faced a fair bit of ragging and personal discomfort because of our parent’s divorce, which in those days wasn’t as common as it is today," the top industrialist said in the first of apparently a three-part series.

His parents, Naval Tata and Sooni, got separated when he was young and was raised by his grandmother, Navajbai.

The 82-year-old business magnate also talked about the differences he had with his father. "I wanted to learn to play the violin, my father insisted on the piano. I wanted to go to college in the US, he insisted on the UK. I wanted to be an architect, he insisted on me becoming an engineer. If it weren’t for my grandmother, I wouldn’t have ended up at Cornell University in the US," he said.

Tata mentioned that he switched majors and graduated with a degree in architecture. "My father was quite upset and there was a fair bit of rancour, but I was finally my own, independent person in college, and it was my grandmother who taught me that courage to speak up can also be soft and dignified," he added.

On his love life, the businessman said that "it was in LA (Los Angeles) that" he "fell in love and almost got married". "But at the same time I had made the decision to move back at least temporarily since I had been away from my grandmother who wasn’t keeping too well for almost 7 years. So I came back to visit her and thought that the person I wanted to marry would come to India with me, but because of the 1962 Indo-China war her parent’s weren’t okay with her making the move anymore, and the relationship fell apart," he further stated.

The bachelor industrialist had earlier revealed in an interview that he came close to getting married four times. "I came seriously close to getting married four times and each time I backed off in fear or for one reason or another. Each occasion was different, but in hindsight when I look at the people involved; it wasn’t a bad thing what I did. I think it may have been more complex had the marriage taken place," he had said.

[edit] Love life

[edit] Carolyn Emmons

Avijit Ghosh, Nov 3, 2024: The Times of India

New Delhi : Ratan Tata found his “first true love” in the teenage daughter of a famous architect in the USA in the early 1960s and the relationship was filled with possibilities but fate willed otherwise, reveals a farm-fresh official biography of the industrialist who passed away last month.


The association was revived in recent years; noted Hollywood director Wes Anderson’s 2007 film, The Darjeeling Limited, playing a key role in the rekindling.


Carolyn Emmons was 19 when she was introduced to the debonair young Indian by her architect father Frederick Earl Emmons, the business partner of fellow designer Archibald Quincy Jones. The two had founded Jones and Emmons, which went on to become a vastly successful architectural firm.


“She said that she was attracted to Ratan at first sight. Her parents were also very fond of him…But the relationship was short-lived,” writes Thomas Mathew in the billionaire businessman’s new biography, Ratan Tata: A Life.


The common link between Carolyn’s father and Ratan was architec- ture. In January 1962, Ratan had completed a five-year-course in architecture receiving a BSc degree from Cornell University. Jones, the business partner of Carolyn’s father, had evaluated his fifth-year thesis. Ratan wrote a letter and dialled Jones. The positive response led the young Indian to fly to Los Angeles where he was offered a job in the firm.


Carolyn’s father “loved” Ratan, the book says. Her mother also thought that the debonair and “polite” young architect was “the most wonderful thing” that could happen to Carolyn. But the relationship couldn’t proceed further because in July 1962, Ratan returned to India to meet his ailing grandmother.
“Carolyn was expected to follow but on Oct 20, 1962, war broke out between India and China. Although in just a month, a ceasefire was declared in the subcontinent, to an American, the situation looked too fraught. Soon afterwards, the two drifted apart,” the book says.


Not giving the relationship a better chance remained a lingering regret with Carolyn. She later married Owen Jones, an architect and a pilot. She had two children from a steady marriage. But the book also quotes her saying, “The funny thing (is that) I married a man who was very much like Ratan.”


Owen died in 2006. A year later, Carolyn was watching, The Darjeeling Limited, with her friends.


The movie, starring Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody, is about three estranged brothers on an emotional journey to India. After the show, one of them asked Carolyn if she ever thought about visiting India. “That was all it took to trigger an avalanche of memories,” the book says.


Carolyn replied that she knew someone in India and expressed a desire to google him. She discovered online that Ratan was now chairman of Tata Sons and Tata Trusts. Re-establishing links via email, Carolyn informed him that she planned to visit India. The trip fructified the next year and she spent about five weeks in India.


“Ratan and Carolyn met in Delhi and spent some time with each other. Since then, Carolyn has travelled to India quite regularly. She made it a point to visit Mumbai on Ratan’s 80th birthday on Dec 28, 2017 and visited him again in 2021. Ratan also takes Carolyn out for dinner almost every time he is in the USA,” writes Mathew, a retired bureaucrat whose book draws on “hundreds of hours of interviews with Ratan Tata,” apart from his friends, family and associates.


[edit] The Mistry connection

[ From the archives of the Times of India]

Reeba Zachariah TNN

There’s an interesting story about how the Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry family checked into Tata Sons. JRD Tata’s youngest brother Dorab is said to have sold his shareholding in Tata Sons to the Mistrys in a fit of anger. The entire 18.4% stake is now held equally through Sterling Investments Corp and Cyrus Investments, making the Mistry family the largest single shareholder in Tata Sons. Cyrus Investments is largely owned by Cyrus Mistry.

The Mistrys are among the 10 richest families in India with a net worth of $7.6 billion (about Rs 38,000 crore), according to Forbes. They are also described as the richest family in Ireland (Pallonji Mistry and his sons are Irish nationals). Ties not split by rival biz interests E xcept group, for Forbes one & company Co, none in of the the companies in the SP Group is listed. Although the Tatas are the largest business group in India, Ratan Tata’s personal Tata Sons shareholding (of less than 1%) is a fraction of that of the Mistrys.

However, the two families have maintained cordial relations and over the years, even forged marital ties. Ratan Tata's half brother, Noel Tata is married to Pallonji's daughter, Aloo. Even in times of trouble, the Mistry family has come to the aid of the Tatas. When the Tatas wanted to divest their holding in Forbes & Company, the Mistry family stepped in. Even earlier, when the Tatas put their stake in ACC on the block, the Mistrys were interested, but Gujarat Ambuja made a better offer. Though the Tatas and Mistrys compete in many areas, such as housing and water purifiers, their relations have not been spoilt by business interests.

Apart from Tata Sons, Mistry family also owns shares of Tata Investment Corp and TCS. When Mistry family acquired Tata Sons' stake, no one could have imagined that one day a Mistry family member would become chairman of the Tata Group. When Pallonji Mistry stepped down as director after retirement in 2005, he left his seat vacant for his younger son, Cyrus. While that came as a surprise for many, announcement of Cyrus as Ratan Tata's successor came as a bolt from the blue.

[edit] As a film producer

From the Hindustan Times

Ratan Tata dabbled in the film industry in the early 2000s when he co-produced a [Filmistan] movie which featured Amitabh Bachchan, John Abraham, and Bipasha Basu. The film was Aetbaar and was released in 2004. The romantic psychological thriller was directed by Vikram Bhatt and was inspired by the 1996 Hollywood film “Fear".

Amitabh Bachchan played the character of Dr. Ranveer Malhotra who is a possessive father who wishes to protect his daughter Ria Malhotra (played by Bipasha Basu) from her obsessive partner Aryan Trivedi ( played by John Abraham). The film was produced by Ratan Tata along with others and had a budget of ₹9.50 crore. The film managed to earn only ₹7.96 crore at the box office owing to which it did not even recover its production costs.

[edit] 2000

India Today Nandini Vaish

December 19, 2008

In 2000,Tata Tea took over Tetley Tea, the company which was twice Tata Tea’s size and had introduced the world to tea bags, for £271 million via a leverage buyout. The move turned the company into the world’s second-largest tea marketer. While Tata was strong on the production front, Tetley’s strengths lay in marketing. At the time of acquisition,The two companies were merged a year later. The Tetley brand name would give Tata Tea access to markets in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and the CIS countries, said the company’s vicechairman, R.K. Krishna Kumar,whose mandate for the acquisition was simple: to eliminate the competition, Unilever. “Tata Tea’s transformation is an eloquent example of the group becoming market-focused and consumer centric”(India Today, February 2003).

[edit] 2006

India Today

The year 2006 proved to be the ‘year of buyouts’ by Indian companies. In October 2006, Tata Steel acquired Anglo-Dutch firm Corus Group for Rs 60,000 crore.

“Many thought our bid was audacious but this was really the commencement of our global strategy,” Ratan Tata said at a press conference. “Tata’s victory symbolises the new confidence of Indian corporates and its growing global ambitions.” (India Today, February 2007) In line with this, the group acquired automaker Ford’s Jaguar and Land Rover car brands for $2.3 billion in March 2008, amid severe opposition from Jaguar’s dealers in the UK and US which expressed concern about selling a luxury brand to an Indian company.

[edit] 2008

India Today December 29, 2008

In October 2008, when the world was feeling the meltdown heat, Tata Consultancy Services acquired BPO Citigroup Global Services for $505 million which was on the block for almost a year. A valuation nearly 50 per cent lower was what finally clinched the deal.