Ratan Tata, who put India’s Tata Group on the global map, passes away at 86

Ratan Tata, the former Tata Group chairman who put a staid and sprawling Indian conglomerate on the global stage with a string of high-profile acquisitions, has died, the Tata Group said in a statement late on Wednesday. He was 86.

Tata, who ran the conglomerate for more than 20 years as chairman, had been undergoing intensive care in a Mumbai hospital, two sources with direct knowledge of his medical situation told Reuters earlier on Wednesday.

“It is with a profound sense of loss that we bid farewell to Mr. Ratan Naval Tata, a truly uncommon leader whose immeasurable contributions have shaped not only the Tata Group but also the very fabric of our nation”  the company said.

Ratan Tata “was a visionary business leader, a compassionate soul and an extraordinary human being,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on social media platform X. “Extremely pained by his passing away. My thoughts are with his family, friends and admirers in this sad hour.”

After graduating with an architecture degree from Cornell University, he returned to India and, in 1962, began working for the group his great-grandfather had founded nearly a century earlier.

He worked for several Tata companies, including Telco and now Tata Motors as well as Tata Steel, later making his mark by erasing losses and increasing market share at group unit National Radio & Electronics Company.

In 1991, he took the helm of the conglomerate when his uncle J.R.D. Tata stepped down – the passing of the baton coming just as India embarked on radical reforms that opened up its economy to the world and ushered in an era of high growth.

In one of his first steps, Ratan Tata sought to rein in the power of some heads of Tata Group’s companies, enforcing retirement ages, promoting younger people to senior positions and ramping up control over companies.

He founded the telecommunications firm Tata Teleservices in 1996 and took IT firm Tata Consultancy Services, the group’s cash cow, public in 2004.

But to grow properly, the group determined it needed to look beyond Indian shores.

It “was the quest for growth and changing the ground rules to say that we could grow by acquisitions which earlier we had never done,” he said in an interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2013.

The group purchased British tea firm Tetley in 2000 for $432m and Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus in 2007 for $13bn, at the time the biggest takeover of a foreign firm by an Indian company. Tata Motors then acquired British luxury auto brands Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor in 2008 for $2.3bn.

His pet projects at Tata Motors included the Indica – the first car model designed and built in India – as well as the Nano, touted as the world’s cheapest car. He contributed initial sketches for both models.

The Indica was a commercial success. The Nano, however, priced at just INR100,000 ($1,200) and the culmination of Ratan Tata’s dream to produce an affordable car for India’s masses, was hurt by initial safety issues and bungled marketing. It was discontinued a decade after its launch.

A licensed pilot who occasionally flew the company plane, Ratan Tata never married and was known for his quiet demeanour, relatively modest lifestyle, and philanthropic work.

About two-thirds of Tata Sons’s share capital, the group’s holding company, is held by philanthropic trusts.

His leadership at Tata was not without controversy – most notably a bitter public feud after the company ousted Cyrus Mistry, a scion of the billionaire Shapoorji Pallonji clan, as chairman of Tata Sons in 2016.

The Tata Group said Mistry had failed to turnaround poorly performing businesses. Mistry accused Ratan Tata, the conglomerate’s chairman emeritus, of interfering and creating an alternate power centre at the group.

After stepping back from the Tata Group, Ratan Tata became known as a prominent investor in Indian startups. He backed a plethora of companies, including digital payments firm Paytm, Ola Electric, a unit of ride-hailing firm Ola, and home and beauty services provider Urban Company.

Among his many awards, he received the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian honour, in 2008 for exceptional and distinguished service in trade and industry.

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