The world of business and industry is a lesser place now after the departure of Ratan Naval Tata, the magnate with a heart who touched the lives of every Indian and citizens of many other countries with products and services ethically made and managed. He was instrumental in bringing global recognition to a very Indian brand and company with shrewd acquisitions from tea to steel to automobiles that paved the way for Indian businesses to go international.
The sadness of wishing adieu to such an icon of 86 years will linger for a while whereas the image he built as a caring, humane tycoon who gave admirable priority to the welfare of his employees, even when he was retrenching in his steel empire, will stay forever. If even half the stories are true of what he did for the members of his workforce stricken by the terror attack on the iconic Taj Mahal hotel in 2008, his name would be on the pantheon of Indian greats forever.
A transformational business leader who combined the art and science of adapting to change that was coming rapidly in the wake of the last days of the licence and permit raj, he may have been fortunate to be at the helm of the salt-to-software family conglomerate at the time India was liberalising in the early 1990s.
Ratan took Tatas to such universal heights not only in terms of the bottom line and profitability — said to have grown 51 times under his stewardship — but also in terms of enhancing brand worth and preserving an ethical image and values. And he did so not only with his shrewd mind but also his large heart that millions of truck drivers in India would attest to.
Many businesses in days of rising prices and large turnovers may have overtaken the Tatas in terms of revenues and profits, but few could have earned the esteem of so many millions of people and retained that warmth to the very end as Ratan did.
In these times of corporate social responsibility, there is no industrialist who does not ‘give’ to charity and causes like the environment. The sweep of Ratan’s philanthropy and his support of the arts was, however, phenomenal in that he gave away over half his earnings and wealth to charity. And yet it is not as if he did not make mistakes, particularly the glaring one of promoting a successor in Cyrus Mistry, who he was to displace later from chairmanship of the group in an ugly public spat that ran in the legal domain for long before his will prevailed.
Tatas’ Nano car project came from Ratan’s heart and his desire to see every Indian drive a car rather than the riskier two and three-wheelers. It proved an expensive failure because Indians were even more aspirational, but he took it as just another business hit with good grace. The world, including India, drives his Jaguars and Land Rovers with pride today, as much as they do Tata’s cars made in India as well as fly Tatas’ Air India again, thus fulfilling Ratan’s own dream of doing a lot for his beloved Indians.
The rich of India are viewed in different ways. Ratan Tata will be the one on the right side of the spectrum, seen as a loving, caring individual, and his memory will be a cherished one, like that of a Titan, which word too is an iconic brand of the Tatas today.
