Ratan Tata, former chairman of the Tata Group who put an ossified Indian conglomerate on the global stage with a series of high-profile acquisitions, has died at the age of 86, the group said in a statement Wednesday.
Tata, who ran the conglomerate for more than 20 years, had been in intensive care at a Mumbai hospital, two sources with direct knowledge of his medical situation told Reuters earlier on Wednesday.
In 2005, Ratan Tata was named Forbes Asian Entrepreneur of the Year and was praised for more than doubling his company’s revenue and moving it toward modern business over the course of a decade.
Tata stepped down from his role as group chairman in 2012, but was given the title of “chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, Tata Motors, Tata Steel and Tata Chemicals,” according to India’s Business Today. After his resignation, he returned briefly to serve as interim CEO in 2016, according to the BBC.
After graduating in architecture from Cornell University, he returned to India and in 1962 began working for the group that his great-grandfather had founded almost a century earlier.
He worked in several Tata companies, including Telco, now Tata Motors Ltd, as well as Tata Steel Ltd, and later made his mark by erasing losses and increasing market share at the group unit National Radio & Electronics Company.
In 1991 he took the helm of the conglomerate when his uncle JRD Tata stepped down. The handover came just as India embarked on radical reforms that opened its economy to the world and ushered in an era of great growth.
In 1996 he founded the telecommunications company Tata Teleservices and in 2004 he took Tata Consultancy Services, the goose that lays the group’s golden eggs, public.
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But to grow properly, the group decided it had to look beyond Indian borders. It was “the pursuit of growth and changing the ground rules to say we could grow through acquisitions, which we had never done before,” he said in an interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2013.
The group bought British tea company Tetley in 2000 for $432 million and Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus in 2007 for $13 billion, at the time the largest acquisition of a foreign company by an Indian company.
In 2008, Tata Motors acquired British luxury car brands Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Co for $2.3 billion.
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Ratan Tata, a certified pilot who occasionally flew the company plane, never married and was known for his calm demeanor, relatively modest lifestyle, and philanthropic work.
About two-thirds of the share capital of Tata Sons, the group’s holding company, is held by philanthropic trusts.
Tata Group Founding
The Tata Group was founded in 1868 and is one of India’s largest conglomerates, comprising over 30 companies across 10 verticals and operating in over 100 countries.
The Tata Group reported revenue of $165 billion in fiscal 2023-24 across its businesses, which employed more than a million people.
With information from Reuters and Forbes US
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