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Ratan Tata: The Decisions Are His Own

Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, founder and chairman of Warwick Manufacturing Group, reveals what makes Ratan Tata click as an industrialist and an individual

Published: Nov 3, 2011 06:34:57 AM IST
Updated: Oct 21, 2011 02:40:03 PM IST
Ratan Tata: The Decisions Are His Own
Image: Vikas Khot

Name: Ratan Tata
Profile: Chairman, Tata Sons
Age: 73
Why He Won For transforming the Tata group to a truly global conglomerate. For showing India Inc. how to dream big. For building a strong leadership pipeline that will make sure the group endures much beyond him.

I deal with a lot of people at Mr. Tata’s level and I can say this — he is unique. He is shy and very thoughtful. He has tremendous humility and feeling for others.  

As a person he is a techie. He likes technology. That gives him his urge for flying. He also loves cars. He has a tremendous grasp about what’s happening in the world.

He’s spent hours on the shopfloor energising workers at Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR). Tell me, how many chairmen would spend that kind of time? There is a palpable buzz each time he visits JLR because he has an intimate understanding of engineering detail.

The first few years of his leadership were tricky. The Tata group had really good but stodgy companies not really equipped to do business in the modern world. He went about getting them up to speed.

The Indica project would be a good illustration of this. When he first proposed it, everyone said, “What on earth is he doing? Just because he has a licence he wants to go ahead and make the car.” But he had that vision for the Tata group — that they must learn and do things and he did that successfully. That is what makes a great leader.

He listens to a lot of people. He takes everyone’s advice but in the end the decision is his own. The buck always stops with him. His people management skills are also unique. Someone might say to him: “This person is not working well, why don’t you sack him?” But he looks at a person in totality. Company performance can go down one year or another but he stays with it and that sustaining power gives him the ability to look beyond mere numbers.

As for Ratan Tata the businessman, I’ll focus on three examples of how he remade two of the best known companies: In the 1990s, when Ratan announced his decision to make a passenger car, there was a lot of criticism. People just didn’t get it. Over the course of a few years, he single-handedly modernised the company. He realised that unless the company did it once, it would never have the self confidence.

A few years later came the Corus acquisition. Here also it was Ratan who first pushed for the bid. His team took about a year to submit it and by then the price had risen, but he still went ahead with it. A lot of people couldn’t understand why he would do that, but I can tell you that today, Tata Steel wouldn’t have survived if it hadn’t globalised. Technology in the steel business is moving so fast.

By the time the JLR bid came about, he had learned his lesson. He got personally involved. A lot of people in [the UK] thought he was daft in bidding for the company. Private equity funds wanted to buy it and strip it of its assets, but he was the only one who knew the company could be turned around. Overnight Tata Motors had access to world class technology and in time this will transfer to Pune [where Tata Motors has a manufacturing facility] as well.

In him, is a mix of tremendous humility and great ambition. After all, he single-handedly transformed the Tata group over the last two decades.

(As told to Samar Srivastava)

(This story appears in the 04 November, 2011 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)

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