Early life
Ratan Tata, the son of Naval Tata, was born on December 28, 1937, in Bombay, now Mumbai (born in Surat). Hirabai Tata, the wife of group founder Jamshedji Tata, was his biological maternal grandmother. Ratan was a Tata by birth since his biological grandpa, Hormusji Tata, was a member of the Tata dynasty. Ratan's parents divorced when he was ten years old, and he was reared by his grandmother, Navajbai Tata, the widow of Sir Ratanji Tata, who legally adopted him through the J. N. Petit Parsi Orphanage.He was reared by his half-brother, Noel Tata (from Naval Tata's second marriage to Simone Tata). Gujarati is his first tongue.
He attended the Campion School in Mumbai till the eighth grade, after which he attended the Cathedral and John Connon Schools in Mumbai, as well as Bishop Cotton School in Shimla,[10] before graduating from Riverdale Country School in New York City in 1955. He earned a bachelor's degree in architecture from Cornell University in 1959, and in 1975, he enrolled in Harvard Business School's seven-week Advanced Management Program, which he has subsequently funded.
During the 1970s, he was promoted to management and went through hardship after experience, eventually turning Group business National Radio and Electronics (NELCO) around, only to see it fail during an economic downturn. 15th [number sixteen] J. R. D. Tata retired as chairman of Tata Sons in 1991, and he named him as his successor. When he began his new job, he was met with fierce opposition from many company executives, some of whom had spent decades in their individual organisations and had risen to become extremely powerful and influential as a result of JRD Tata's freedom to operate.He began by establishing a retirement age, after which he required individual enterprises to report operationally to the group office and to give a portion of their profits to the development and usage of the Tata group brand. Younger talent was injected and given responsibility, and innovation was prioritised. Under his leadership, overlapping operations of group firms were consolidated into a unified entity, with the salt-to-software conglomerate quitting unconnected areas to focus on globalisation.
During his 21 years as CEO of the Tata Group, revenue increased by more than 40 times and profit increased by more than 50 times. When he took leadership, the group's sales were dominated by commodities; when he left, the bulk of sales were driven by brands. He took a risk and convinced Tata Tea to buy Tetley, Tata Motors to buy Jaguar Land Rover, and Tata Steel to buy Corus. Tata became a worldwide company as a result of all of this, with over 65 percent of revenues coming from operations and sales in over 100 countries. He was the brains of the Tata Nano automobile. In a 2015 interview for Harvard Business School's Creating Emerging Markets initiative, he said,The Tata Nano's development was noteworthy since it helped bring automobiles within reach of the typical Indian customer.
Cyrus Mistry vs. Tata Sons
On October 24, 2016, the board of directors of Tata Group agreed to dismiss chairman Cyrus Mistry with immediate effect, appointing Ratan Tata as temporary chairman, and Mistry was removed as a director of Tata Sons in February 2017.
In December 2019, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) ruled that Cyrus Mistry's dismissal as Chairman of Tata Sons was unconstitutional and that he should be reinstated. The $111 billion conglomerate filed an appeal with India's Supreme Court, requesting that the NCLAT judgement directing the Tata group to rehire the man it ousted as chairman be overturned. Ratan Tata is personally heading the battle in the lawsuit, and has filed a second appeal in the Supreme Court opposing the verdict. The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) ruling allowing Cyrus Mistry to be reinstalled as Tata Sons chairman in January 2020 has been delayed by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, on the other hand, affirmed Cyrus Mistry's dismissal.
Philanthropy
Tata is a famous philanthropist in India who supports education, medical, and rural development. Tata aided the Faculty of Engineering at the University of New South Wales in developing capacitive deionization to provide better water to underserved areas.
- Tata Education and Development Trust, a philanthropic affiliate of Tata Group, endowed a $28 million Tata Scholarship Fund which will allow Cornell University to supply aid to undergraduate students from India. The scholarship fund will support approximately 20 scholars at any given time and can make sure that the absolute best Indian students have access to Cornell, no matter their financial circumstances. The scholarship are going to be awarded annually; recipients will receive the scholarship for the duration of their undergraduate study at Cornell.
- In 2010, Tata Group companies and Tata charities donated $50 million for the development of an executive center at Harvard graduate school (HBS). the chief center has been named Tata Hall, after Ratan Tata (AMP '75), chairman emeritus of Tata Sons. the entire construction costs are estimated at $100 million. Tata Hall is found within the northeast corner of the HBS campus, and is dedicated to the Harvard Business School's mid-career Executive Education program. it's seven stories tall, and about 155,000 gross square feet. It houses approximately 180 bedrooms, additionally to academic and multi-purpose spaces.
- Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has given the most important ever donation by a corporation to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) for a facility to research in cognitive systems and autonomous vehicles. TCS donated $35 million for this grand 48,000 square-foot building that's called TCS Hall.
- In 2014, Tata Group endowed the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and formed the Tata Center for Technology and style (TCTD) to develop design and engineering principles suited to the requirements of individuals and communities with limited resources. They gave ₹950 million to the institute which was the most important ever donation received in its history.
- Tata Group, under the leadership of Ratan Tata formed the MIT Tata Center of Technology and style at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a mission to deal with the challenges of resource-constrained communities, with an initial specialise in India.