Ratan Tata, the visionary entrepreneur who transformed Indian industry

In 1996 he founded the telecommunications company Tata Teleservices and in 2004 he took Tata Consultancy Services, the group's golden goose, to the stock exchange. But it is probably the foreign acquisitions that more than anything else have marked his 20-plus years at the helm of the Mumbai-based giant. Under Tata's leadership, the group undertook an expansion that at times seemed to want to avenge India's colonial past. Among the most famous transactions were the purchase of the British tea company Tetley in 2000 for USD 432 million and the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus in 2007 for USD 13 billion, at the time the largest acquisition of a foreign company by an Indian company. Tata Motors then acquired the British luxury car brands Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford in 2008 for $2.3 billion.

Cars have been one of Tata's passions. His favourite designs at Tata Motors were the Indica, the first car model designed and built in India, and the Nano, presented as the world's cheapest car. Tata contributed the initial designs of both models. But while the Indica was a commercial success, the Nano, sold for only 100,000 rupees (about 1,100 euro) was a resounding failure. It was supposed to convert Indian families from two-wheelers to four-wheelers, but despite the publicity battage it failed to capture the ambitions of a rapidly changing country and after 10 years production was stopped.

Born in Mumbai on 28 December 1937, Ratan Naval Tata was raised by his grandmother after his parents, Naval and Sooni Tata, divorced when he was 10 years old. His father had been adopted into the main Tata family at the age of 13 by the daughter-in-law of Jamsetji Tata, founder of the Tata group. After graduating in architecture from Cornell, USA, Tata wanted to settle in California, but his grandmother's ill health prompted him to return to India, where he received a job offer from Ibm.

The then president of Tata Sons, Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata, known as JRD, persuaded him to work for the group instead. The two men were distantly related, belonging to different branches of the Tata family tree, one of the most prominent Parsi families in Mumbai. Trained by JRD, the young Tata began his career with the conglomerate in 1962, undertaking various assignments in various units before entering management in the 1970s. Ratan Tata was the Group Chairman from 1991 to 2012.

After retiring, Ratan Tata became a prominent investor in Indian start-ups, backing several companies including digital payments company Paytm, Ola Electric, and home and beauty service provider Urban Company.

A licensed pilot who occasionally took the controls of the company plane, Ratan Tata never married and was known for his reserved character, relatively modest lifestyle and philanthropic work.

The group's last major acquisition was not of a British company, but it was nevertheless full of symbolic significance. In 2021, Tata Sons took back control of Air India, the country's national airline, almost 90 years after it had been nationalised. Heavily in debt and now a shadow of its former glory, the deal meant that Tata was able to bring an airline originally founded by its mentor, JRD, back into the fold.