When a company manages to change the perception of a country, line up serial successes, and grow by improving the business and conditions of its employees and customers, then something great goes beyond numbers and business. This is the case of the Tata Group, an Indian conglomerate with over a century-long history and an ability to broaden industrial horizons with few equals. Founded in 1868 as a textile company, Tata is synonymous with progress.

In 1903, India created India’s first luxury hotel chain, the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower; four years later, it entered the steel industry, acquired three hydroelectric companies, and started the production of consumer goods (from diesel to detergents). At the turn of the 1930s and 1940s came another acceleration, with entry into the aeronautics and chemical industries and the birth of Telco, which was dedicated to the production of locomotives and would be renamed Tata Motors in 2003. Then, in the years to come, the business continued to expand, integrating air conditioners, cosmetics, watches and software services.

Luxury and the West

A steady surge, never looking back and assisted by a focus on improving the lives of the Indian people. ‘For my father, wealth was a secondary objective, subordinate to the desire to improve the industrial and intellectual condition of the Indian people of this country,’ said Dorabji Tata in 1911. The words of the founder’s son, Jamsetji Tata, have remained enshrined in the minds of his heirs, as has been demonstrated by the work of Ratan Tata, an engineer who trained in the United States and to whom we owe the metamorphosis of the Tata Group and its opening to the West.

This is achieved through many acquisitions of top foreign companies and a focus on internal processes and waste. Following this vision in a rigorous manner with Ratan Tata, the Indian group had reached where it seemed impossible, not only in numbers but also in prestige, surprising the whole world when, in 2008, Tata Motors acquired control of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) by closing a $2.3 billion deal with Ford.

A symbolic handover for India and the whole of Asia, which was not a parenthesis or a point of arrival because, in a bid to elevate the JLR brand in the luxury electric car market, the Indian group announced that it would invest in the equivalent of 21 billion euros in the next five.

Tata Nano and philanthropy

Looking up and down has been one of Ratan Tata’s merits, as he has constantly watched his fellow citizens. The proof is the Tata Nano, a small car launched in 2008 at a cheap price to encourage the spread of four-wheelers in the large cities of the Indian Subcontinent. Although commercially, the Nano was a flop, as it was too expensive for the poorer classes and too modest for the emerging class, the attempt represents Ratan Tata’s ability and willingness to think outside the box.

A not so obvious conception in India. That he was a different man from the various heirs of the Tata family who led the group was also clear for other reasons, such as philanthropy. It may come as a surprise to learn that there are several classrooms of US schools that bear his name, but this is a tribute due to the funds donated for the construction of parts of the same institutes, to which he had remained attached after graduating from Cornell University. Another oddity, a symptom of his love for animals, is the inheritance of around €100 million that Ratan Tata (never married) left to Tito, his dog.

Endless growth

Also testifying to Ratan Tata’s greatness are the honours he has received in various countries (Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy) for his work, which can be summed up in a few significant figures achieved by the Tata Group: present in more than 100 countries and with more than 350,000 employees, the group has recorded a continuous increase in turnover, which last year reached $165 billion.

Numbers are weighed down by the vision of Ratan Tata, who led the group from 1991 to 2017, retaining an apex position even after his resignation, which opened the door for the first time to a CEO not linked to the founding family. Due to the frictions that arose between Cyrus Mistry, his successor manager, and the board of directors, Ratan Tata has therefore continued to set the direction for India’s second largest multinational. He did this until 9 October, when he died at the age of 86, remaining true to his motto: ‘I would never make a decision for myself that I could not explain to my children.’