Ratan Tata, the businessman who inherited one of India’s oldest conglomerates and turned it into a global empire through a series of lucrative deals, has died. He was 86 years old.
His death was announced in a statement by Tata Group Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran, who called Tata “truly an extraordinary leader, whose incomparable contributions have shaped not only the Tata Group but also the basic structure of our country.”
As chairman for more than two decades, starting in 1991, Tata rapidly expanded the 156-year-old business house. It now operates in more than 100 countries and had revenues of $165 billion for the year ending March 2024.
Through more than two dozen listed firms, the group makes products ranging from coffee and cars to salt and software, runs airlines and launched India’s first superapp. It has also partnered with Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp for an $11 billion chip fabrication plant in India and is said to be planning an iPhone assembly plant.
Under Tata’s leadership, the conglomerate began an expansion drive that overturned India’s colonial past. It snapped up prestigious British assets, including steelmaker Corus Group Plc. In 2007 and 2008 luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover. But soon thereafter the financial crisis rocked global markets, causing car sales in developed economies to collapse.
“Ratan Tata imagined big and took the empire beyond India,” said Kavil Ramachandran, executive director of the Thomas Schmidheny Center for Family Enterprise at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. “While they thought globally, it turned out to be a hasty initiative.”
Tata led the group for 21 years in his first term and retired in 2012. He returned as interim chief for a few months in 2016 after the bitter ouster of his successor Cyrus Mistry.
Tata also found himself at the center of an intense battle for control of the group not once but twice in his career.
The first battle, when he took over as chairman in 1991, pitted him against longtime executives who had been running fiefdoms within the group under his predecessor. The second, in 2016 – four years after his retirement – was about preserving his legacy as Mistry sought to reduce debt.
Tata won both. In 2016, Mistry was removed as chairman of Tata Sons, the group’s main holding firm, in a boardroom coup. The move triggered a bitter court battle that threatened to end a 70-year partnership with Mistry’s family and seal Tata’s authority over the group. In 2020, Mistry’s family indicated their intention to sell their 18% stake in Tata Sons.
2008 Mumbai terrorist attack
The group faced another crisis in late 2008 when terrorists targeted the group’s flagship hotel, the Taj Mahal Palace, overlooking Mumbai’s Gateway of India, as part of a wider attack on the city. About 31 people, including 11 employees, died during the four-day siege. Today guests staying at the hotel are greeted by a memorial with the names of the victims, each of whose families Tata met personally.
Tata never married and had no children. His death has left a void at the leadership of the charity group, the powerful Tata Trusts. These philanthropic trusts hold approximately 66% of Tata Sons, which in turn controls all major listed Tata companies. Tata Trusts is traditionally led by a member of the Tata family and controls the group through its stake in Tata Sons.
In his last few years, Tata became an avid supporter of startups including Ola Electric Mobility Ltd, which had a bumper listing in 2024, and Goodfellows, a platform aimed at inter-generational friendship.
The origins of the Tata Group date back to 1868, when Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata founded a trading company which later diversified into cotton mills, steel plants and hotels. Tata Parsi belongs to the Zoroastrian community, which fled religious persecution in Persia centuries ago before seeking refuge in western India.
parents got divorced
Born on December 28, 1937 in Mumbai, Ratan Naval Tata was raised by his grandmother after his parents Naval and Sooni Tata divorced when he was 10. His father’s 13-year-old daughter was adopted into the main Tata family – the in-laws of Tata Group founder Jamsetji Tata.
Tata, who usually drives a Rolls-Royce, attended school in Mumbai, India’s commercial capital. As a young student, he learned piano and played cricket but was afraid of public speaking. His younger brother, Jimmy Tata, stayed away from public life and little is known about him.
“We faced a lot of ragging and personal troubles due to our parents’ divorce, which was not as common in those days as it is today,” Ratan Tata wrote in a Facebook post in 2020. “But our grandmothers taught us to maintain dignity at all costs, a value that has remained with me to this day. This included walking away from these situations, otherwise we would have fought against it.’
Tata went to college at Cornell University in the United States with plans to study mechanical engineering, in accordance with his father’s wishes, but received an opportunity elsewhere.
Tata recalled in a 2009 interview with Cornell, “I always wanted to be an architect, and at the end of my second year at Cornell, I made the switch – much to my father’s consternation and dismay.” He graduated with a degree in Architecture in 1962.
IBM offer
Tata wanted to settle in California, but his grandmother’s poor health prompted him to return to India, where he received a job offer from International Business Machines Corp.
The then chairman of Tata Sons, Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata, better known as JRD, persuaded him to work for the group. Both men were distant relatives, part of different branches of the Tata family tree. Trained by JRD, the young Tata began his career in the group in 1962, holding several assignments in various units before joining the management in the 1970s.
In 1991, when Tata was selected for the top position at Tata Sons, the group’s focus was mostly on India. Tata Consultancy Services Limited, the software maker that became a cash cow years later, was still in its infancy. The automotive business had not yet started making passenger cars.
The 1990s were also the decade when India began to cut its notorious red tape, abandoning parts of its failed Soviet-style planned economy. This means that private sector companies can compete more effectively in sectors dominated by state-owned enterprises, leading to faster economic growth and a boost in consumption.
As India allowed foreign automakers from Ford Motor Company to Hyundai Motor Company to set up factories and meet growing consumer demand, Tata also decided to make cars. Tata launched the first locally manufactured passenger vehicle in 1998 and named it Indica – “my baby.”
As India’s economy began to boom in the 2000s, Tata became more adventurous. In 2007, he took out a loan to pay about $13 billion for British steelmaker Corus. The following year, they acquired Jaguar Land Rover, or JLR, from Ford for $2.3 billion. They also bought Tetley Group PLC and the heavy vehicle unit of South Korea’s Daewoo Group.
new challenges
While the acquisition spree helped bring the group’s geographical footprint to an entirely new level, it also posed several challenges.
The 2008 financial crisis led to a widespread decline in commodity prices, while an abundance of steel due to increased Chinese exports drove down prices, triggering criticism that Tata had overpaid to acquire Corus. Tata Steel Ltd. has scaled back its European operations in recent years due to declining demand and higher cost structures, and has cut thousands of jobs on the continent.
JLR also faced difficulties soon after its acquisition by Tata as the financial crisis affected demand for luxury cars as well as the company’s ability to access credit. While the Tata Group managed to turn around the major car brand within a few years, it soon faced other headwinds ranging from declining Chinese demand to Brexit. The pandemic and chip shortage have hit JLR in recent years.
Tata suffered another auto-related setback with the failure of the Nano microcar. He wanted to create an affordable automobile with a retail price of ₹100,000 ($1,190.9), aimed at the millions of Indians who commonly used motorcycles to commute and transport their families. Production of the Nano was ended in 2018, nearly 10 years after its unveiling, amid lack of demand due to initial quality and safety concerns.
Perhaps the last business battle Tata fought was the most satisfying for him.
In 2021, Tata Sons acquired control of the country’s flagship carrier Air India Limited, nearly 90 years after it was taken over by the state. Heavily indebted and a shadow of its former glory – Salvador Dali once designed ashtrays as gifts for airline guests – the deal meant that Tata was able to welcome into the group an airline that was originally their Guru, was founded by JRD.
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