It's possible to be honest and principled and succeed
Nobody disputes that, during his lifetime, JRD Tata was the most respected -- and probably the most admired -- businessman in
Ratan has finally inherited JRD's title. He is clearly the most respected and admired businessman in
Think back to that phase, 10 years ago, when the Tatas struggled to reinvent themselves in the post-JRD era.
Ratan was perceived then: awkward, untalented, unworthy of the job, out of his depth and full of vindictive anger against many of the satraps of the JRD regime.
It was a time of change. New groups were springing up out of nowhere. The Infosys legend, personified by Narayan Murthy's personal simplicity and marked by the world-class skills of his high-tech partners, had just begun.
At Tata headquarters, however, the crises mounted: record losses at Tata Motors.
The criminal charges over Tata Tea's alleged links with
Allegations of foolishness in the sale of Tata Oil Mills' assets.
A plan to launch a domestic airline with
And many of us wondered if we were watching
Poor, shy, inept Ratan seemed unable to cope.
And yet, a mere decade later, here was the same Ratan being feted by the world's media as the man who reinvented, if not the wheel, then certainly the motorcar. A man who did what no global carmaker believed was possible.
Here was a new Ratan, as he joked about calling the car the 'Pachauri' (after the environmentalist who chose to attack the Nano as a pollution threat. Or even the 'Mamata' (after the nutcase) or 'Despite Mamata'.
Nano at a lakh because "a promise is a promise".
The triumph of the Nano was merely the crowning glory in a series of successes.
Throughout the 21st century, the Tatas have beaten every doom-laden prediction and silenced every critic. Tata Motors came back from losses of over Rs 600 crore to make huge profits on the back of the Indica.
Infosys had fulfilled its early promise but even then Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a company that had been little noticed in the 1990s, had grown to dominate the Indian IT sector, its size dwarfing Infosys.
Tata Steel had defied Rusi Mody's predictions, had been whittled down to a slim and lean company, and had even gone ahead and bought Corus, a global giant, after a bidding war during which Ratan had shown nerves of steel.
And even as Ratan was unveiling the world's cheapest car, the Tatas were on the verge of clinching the purchase of Jaguar, one of the world's great luxury cars.
How had so many people, who should have known better, got Ratan so wrong?
Business pundits will tell you -- in the kind of detail that I will never be able to master -- just how the Tatas turned themselves around. I'm sure they are right. But remember, most of these pundits were the same guys who wrote Ratan off to begin with, a decade or so ago.
A few theories on the remarkable rise of Ratan Tata.
- Ratan realised
India India Jamshedpur
- He saw the wisdom of embracing the future. Hence, the focus on TCS. And hence the determination to go global: we talk about Corus, the Pierre, Tetley etc, but the big successes are only the tip of the iceberg. Years ago, Ratan told that he was determined to use Indian managerial ability and Tata capital to globalise the group. In 2000, this seemed overly ambitious and grandiose.. But he has grabbed the opportunities for globalisation like no other Indian industrialist has.
- At the same time, he put his faith in young
India
- He told the government to go to hell. No group has faced more unfair governmental harassment than the Tatas -- right from the Tata Tea case where they were framed by the Assam government to the telecom tangle where they were bullied by an arrogant Dayanidhi Maran. Not once did Ratan agree to pay a bribe. He wouldn't even go and complain to Manmohan Singh (who has immense respect for him). Instead, he stood his ground. If in the process, he lost a project, he lived with the loss but maintained his principles. So it has been with Mamata Banerjee's foolish Singur campaign: he will never buckle under it or try and buy her off.
- He let his heart guide him. Early in his career, when Nani Palkhivala persuaded the Tatas to liquidate the Central India Mill even though it could have been turned around with an infusion of just Rs 50 lakh, an angry and disgusted Ratan gave his own annual Tata salary bonus to the officers of the company. "They were perfectly blameless people who had now lost their jobs through no fault of theirs because of a bad corporate decision. They had homes to run and children to educate," he remembered in an interview in 2005.
It was his heart that told him to build the Nano. He would see families of four on a single scooter. The father would keep his son in front and the mother would hold on to her baby. He wondered why it was not possible to give such families a car where they could be safe and comfortable for the same price. Plus, they would keep their dignity.
There are many reasons for building a car. But this, I think, is the best one of all.
- And finally, I think,
India
The Tatas had gone through good times and bad times. But they had always given nearly all of their profits to charity. They had consistently refused to break the law and encourage corruption.
Older generations of businessmen thought they were silly and shortsighted to do so considering that everybody else played the game. But now
When we see Ratan Tata refusing to pay bribes, refusing to lick politicians' boots and refusing to bend the rules -- and still taking the Tatas from strength to strength, still buying the world's best companies, and still reinventing the rules of the car industry -- well then, we know that there is a better way. The honest way.
BigGains !!
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