Mr. Ratan N. Tata stepped down as Chairman of the Tata Group on Friday heralding a change of guard after a 20+ year tenure at the helm of the Group. I remember when Mr. Tata was first appointed Chairman in 1991, there was much discussion about his suitability for the role. Yet, Mr. Tata proved to be a visionary leader. He transformed a sleepy and traditional business group, that was a loosely aligned set of companies which shared a common name, in to a $100bn global behemoth that had seven business lines under centralized management. Mr. Ratan Tata has also been responsible for converting the Tata Group in to a true multinational corporation; in 2008 its revenues outside India overtook revenues from within the country.
Mr. Tata’s transformative impact on the Group did not stop there, he changed the governance within the Tata Group companies, introducing a compulsory retirement age for company directors. As a good friend and senior executive at one of the Indian majors said to me in a conversation the other day, “beyond a certain age, it is difficult to hold the myriad details that a top executive needs to have readily accessible in their minds, so that they can make the important decisions that determine the future of the business.”
Not only has Mr. Tata transformed the Group and steered it through turbulent times, but the moves the group made during his tenure have inspired Indian industry at large. In March 2000, the then Tata Tea …
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