Ratan Tata, Dreamer And Ideas Executioner

There were certainly qualities adhering to the Tata Group, which emanated from the persona of Ratan Tata.
Most notable of these would be the low profile he maintained, which sharply contrasted the in-your-face celebrity status, celebration of wealth and pursuit of importance many of liberalised India's rich, love, notes Shyam G Menon.

IMAGE: Then chairman of the Tata group Ratan Tata speaks at the Tata Steel AGM in Mumbai, August 28, 2008. Photograph: Arko Datta/Reuters

Aside from interacting with him as a journalist, I didn't know the late Ratan Tata.

I was the one with a question or two at a press briefing, a sentence elicited on the sidelines of some conference or the annual general meeting (AGM) of one of the several Tata companies and on a rare occasion or two, lucky to merit a very brief interview.

Once I moved off regular employment and shifted to freelancing, my conversations with senior Tata officials ceased save those who elected to remember me and who I met as a friend.

A cover story in the early 1990s

I heard of Ratan Tata for the first time in the late 1980s. By then, the breadth of one's reading had grown a bit and the Indian business press had begun making its presence felt.

Once in a while, the family bought a business magazine and in there, would be reports about Tata companies, including sometimes, mention of Ratan Tata.

A proper profile of the person expected to succeed J R D Tata was missed.

For me, that changed when Thiruvananthapuram-based senior journalist, K G Kumar, did a cover story for Business India on Ratan Tata.

For some years, Kumar was our neighbour in the city and when he did an article on Tata, the family made sure that a copy of the magazine was bought and read.

With that, Ratan Tata stayed in mind. Years later, as a journalist myself, when I was transferred to Mumbai in the mid-1990s and given the chance to cover some of the companies in the Tata Group, I embraced the opportunity.

The first time, I saw Ratan Tata was at the Tata Motors AGM, at that time, Tata Electric and Locomotive Company (TELCO -- the company would later become Tata Engineering and eventually, Tata Motors).

I recall looking at the tall figure walking towards the stage at Mumbai's Birla Matoshree auditorium; it was a bit like the articles I had read and the photos I had seen, come alive.

If one was assigned any of Mumbai's big companies to cover, then being at its AGM was an annual ritual.

For the journalist, the critical stages were the chairman's opening address and his replies to shareholders' questions.

What came in between -- the shareholders' questions -- was often the stuff of blind praise.

Discerning questions were few. Some shareholders were famous for their presentation style.

I remember a gentleman who fashioned himself like a management guru, dropped names and quotes and instructed companies to do this and that.

Then, there was the elderly woman who shaped her praise for the company's top management in the form of couplets.

Depending on who the couplets of praise were addressed to, the director concerned laughed or squirmed in embarrassment, occasionally turning red.

These being the years before the smartphone became common, in the hours between chairman's address and his answers to questions raised, the journalist sank into his auditorium seat and doodled away on his notepad.

IMAGE: Ratan Tata speaks at the launch of Tata Motors' first compact car, Tata Indica, at the Auto Expo in New Delhi in 1998. Photograph: Kind courtesy Ratan Tata/Instagram

Snapshots from the past

Indulgence of shareholders was highest at Tata AGMs. A typical Tata AGM was quite democratic with a long list of shareholder-speakers and almost all of them getting the chance to speak.

In contrast, a Reliance AGM featuring the late Dhirubhai Ambani, felt like a durbar; the chairman had a formidable presence.

At some other AGMs, company chairmen distinctly walked the edge of patience weathering the deluge of praise and questions.

Year after year, Mr Tata sat through all this. Unlike other chairmen, he was chairman of a small basket of big listed companies and the AGMs were as many.

Somewhere towards the middle of each meeting, a liveried butler served tea/coffee and what one suspects were plates of cashew nuts to the officials on stage.

Mr Tata nibbled them and continued listening. The only time I saw him being combative and absolutely firm was at an AGM of the Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL), from the period when there was a turf war between Bombay House (headquarters of the Tata Group) and Ajit Kerkar.

Stamping his management control over IHCL was the last of the battles with the old guard, Ratan Tata had to face as J R D Tata's successor at the Tata Group.

A key senior official at Mr Tata's side, in these times of transitioning the old to the new, was former Tata Sons director, N A Soonawala.

The aforementioned AGM was a stormy affair.

After the AGM, the mantle of leadership at Taj hotels (owned by IHCL), passed on to the late R K Krishna Kumar, who had groomed Tata Tea (now Tata Consumer Products Limited) into a big company.

Krishna Kumar was a close confidante of Mr Tata; it was under his leadership that Tata Tea acquired Tetley, the first of the major overseas acquisitions by Tata companies during Ratan Tata's tenure at the helm.

On the steel industry front, Tata Steel acquired Corus, another big-ticket deal.

Sometime before Krishna Kumar assumed charge at IHCL, I unexpectedly ran into Ratan Tata at an apartment not far from my office in Mumbai's Churchgate.

It was the period when Tata Tea landed in controversy in Assam.

There were court proceedings going on and the late Ram Jethmalani was the lawyer representing the Tata Group.

Given there were points in the affidavit we wished to understand better, we contacted Jethmalani who asked us to come over to his house.

I requested my senior editor to accompany me so that the much-respected lawyer may take me seriously.

At Jethmalani's flat, the maid who opened the door, said he was just then in a meeting and asked us to wait in the adjacent room.

The path to the room led through the main hall.

Sitting there with Jethmalani, were Ratan Tata, Krishna Kumar and Nusli Wadia (chairman of the Wadia Group).

After concluding that discussion, Jethmalani met us.

That moment in the hall stayed with me as one of those instances young journalists love to recall with excitement.

With age and experience it has since distilled to just that -- a moment; a picture.

Photograph: Kind courtesy Ratan Tata/Instagram

No Tata and yet Tata

The project, which made Ratan Tata a national figure was the one to design and manufacture, Tata Motors' first compact car.

The Tata Indica, sporting significant indigenous inputs, was launched in 1998, at the Auto Expo in New Dehi.

In the preceding months, there had been questions about the merit of Tata Motors foraying into cars.

So, unveiling the product to the world was a tense moment.

Years later, and after some truly testing times for the car venture, the gamble seems to have paid off.

Not only is Tata Motors among the biggest manufacturers of cars in India, but courtesy its acquisition of Jaguar-Land Rover, its profile in brand and technology has also risen manifold.

Even the humble Nano, presented initially as a product capable of disrupting the assembly line process (Mr Tata had spoken of a potential parallel between decentralised computer assembly and the small car) and later discontinued, engages afresh as a possible format for electric propulsion.

And while the group may not have intended it, the specter of the Tatas buying up companies in UK and Europe did spread satisfaction in some quarters as a portrait of India outgrowing its colonial shadow (as per media reports, the Group's turnover rose from around five billion dollars to over 100 billion dollars during Ratan Tata's period as chairman).

This quality -- of being as much a dreamer and executioner of ideas as a corporate official -- is an important ingredient in the public image Ratan Tata came to have.

Add to it, the stories about his accessibility and empathy for common people -- it was an image with a distinct human element.

In the eyes of his critics, however, that image glossed over the group's shortcomings and mistakes.

Soon after Mr Tata's passing, alongside ample praise on social media there were also some posts citing questionable decisions taken by the group under his stewardship.

On the night of October 9-10, as news of Ratan Tata's demise spread, the question on my mind was -- for the likes of me, who watched Mr Tata from far in their employed years as a journalist, was the man what came to define the house of Tata as we know it now or, was he defined by the business group? I think it was a mix of both.

Mr Tata's good deeds, his love for dogs (about which much has been written) and the charity work of the Tata Trusts were already known when his legacy was being shaped.

I like to remember something else.

Like it or not, the Tata Group commands trust and trustworthiness like few other business conglomerates do, in India.

That is not the outcome of one chairman's tenure.

It is the convergent legacy of Mr Tata and those before him.

Under Ratan Tata, one recalls the restructuring and realignment of companies within the Group and studies around the Tata brand, including a redesigning of the Tata logo.

It is possible that the blend of ingredients constituting brand Tata in the public mind, was rendered more clarified through such understanding of the constituents.

One of the unsaid benefits of such an approach is how it permits family control to be distinguished from professional management and the preservation and transmission of the institutional values contained in the brand.

The potential resident in this was also in tune with instances globally, wherein promoter-families retained equity ownership but left management and brand continuity to professionals or, awaited a competent manager from their fold before appointing him at a company's apex.

IMAGE: Ratan Tata and Natarajan Chandrasekaran at the reopening of Bombay House in Mumbai. Photograph: Hitesh Harisinghani/Rediff.com

Viewed so, it should not surprise that two non-Tata heads for the Tata Group (Cyrus Mistry and N Chandrasekaran) happened during Ratan Tata's time, including the appointment and exit of one, which brought Mr Tata back as chairman briefly.

While there have been subsequent reports in the media about the exact contexts and reasons behind these appointments, fact is, the group could stay Tata and feel so even without a Tata directly in charge at Bombay House.

In the same vein, the departure of its iconic chairman emeritus needn't be construed by shareholders and the capital markets as a terrible blow to the Group.

Yet looking from far, there were certainly qualities adhering to the Tata Group, which emanated from the persona of Ratan Tata.

Most notable of these would be the low profile he maintained, which sharply contrasted the in-your-face celebrity status, celebration of wealth and pursuit of importance many of liberalised India's rich, love.

IMAGE: J R D Tata and Ratan Tata at a Founder's Day function in Jamshedpur. Photograph: Kind courtesy Ratan Tata/Instagram

Easy to talk to and down to earth

Mr Tata was among the most important persons in Mumbai, but the city felt he lived aware of less fortunate others and not merely in the cocooned company of the privileged.

Even if he did, he wasn't grudged the predicament because he was perceived overall as a person who was humble and preferring the shadows despite his position.

That is unusual in contemporary corporate India, particularly in age of social media.

For India Inc, Ratan Tata was the best ambassador it had in the years following liberalisation.

Few corporate leaders were this widely liked and respected.

In his retired years, Mr Tata was reported to invest in newly started companies.

He was spoken of as a mentor to young entrepreneurs.

That at his age and seniority in the business community, he was sought out by a much younger generation for his support and advice, speaks about the position in popular imagination, he enjoyed.

This image also opens the doors to subtle dangers. A personality like that of Ratan Tata's makes economic development appear superior to politics.

It's why political parties like to highlight and market the development happening during their stint in government as their exclusive gift even though said development is earned by the people, with their tax money, their work and the companies they founded.

It is for India Inc to make sure that development does not get hijacked as a political tool or agenda and instead, remains where it should be -- in the public realm, as a popular aspiration and passing milestones in the natural progression of a society.

If politics has anything to learn or copy from Ratan Tata, it would be the personal qualities which endeared him to so many people; those who knew him well and those, like me, who didn't.

Mid-October 2024, a week after Mr Tata's demise, I spoke to K G Kumar in Thiruvananthapuram.

It was in the early 1990s that he worked on the cover story featuring Ratan Tata, which I came to read.

At that time, Mr Tata hadn't yet taken over as chairman of the Tata Group.

Kumar and a colleague met Mr Tata at his residence, where the journalist noticing the industrialist's Bang & Olufsen stereo system and asking about it got Mr Tata talking.

The interaction was spread over two days and included traveling to Mr Tata's country house on Madh Island.

The emphasis was on getting to know the person to write a profile of the individual.

Mr Tata avoided reference to business matters.

He was easy to talk to and down to earth. And yes, there was a dog in the frame then too.

Shyam G Menon is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com