Ratan Tata

At 86 years old, Ratan Tata has this physical status:

Promoted to management during the 1970s, Ratan achieved initial success by turning Group company National Radio and Electronics (NELCO) around, only to see it collapse during an economic slowdown. In 1991, J. R. D. Tata stepped down as chairman of Tata Sons, naming him his successor. When he settled down into the new role, he faced stiff resistance from many companies heads, some of whom had spent decades in their respective companies and rose to become very powerful and influential due to the freedom to operate under JRD Tata. He began replacing them by setting a retirement age, and then made individual companies report operationally to the group office and made each contribute some of their profit to build and use the Tata group brand. Innovation was given priority and younger talent was infused and given responsibilities. Under his stewardship, overlapping operations in group companies were streamlined into a synergised whole, with the salt-to-software group exiting unrelated businesses to take on globalisation.

During the 21 years he led the Tata Group, revenues grew over 40 times, and profit, over 50 times. Where sales of the group as a whole, overwhelmingly came from commodities when he took over, the majority sales came from brands when he exited. He boldly got Tata Tea to acquire Tetley, Tata Motors to acquire Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Steel to acquire Corus. All this turned Tata from a largely India-centric group into a global business, with over 65% revenues coming from operations and sales in over 100 countries. He conceptualised the Tata Nano car. In 2015, He explained in an interview for the Harvard Business School's Creating Emerging Markets project, the development of the Tata Nano was significant because it helped put cars at a price-point within reach of the average Indian consumer.

Ratan Tata resigned his executive powers in the Tata group on 28 December 2012, upon turning 75 and Board of Directors and Legal division refused to appoint Cyrus Mistry as a successor of 44-year-old son of Pallonji Mistry of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, the largest individual shareholder of the group and related by marriage. On 24 October 2016, Cyrus Mistry was removed as the chairman of Tata Sons and Ratan Tata was made interim chairman. The decision went through intense media scrutiny that made many scrutinize the root causes of the sudden removal, and the resultant crisis. A selection committee was formed to find a successor. The selection committee consisted of Mr. Tata, TVS Group head Venu Srinivasan, Amit Chandra of Bain Capital, former diplomat Ronen Sen and Lord Kumar Bhattacharya. All of them, except Mr. Bhattacharya, were on the board of Tata Sons. On 12 January 2017, Natarajan Chandrasekaran was named as the chairman of Tata Sons, a role he assumed in February 2017.

Tata invested personal savings in Snapdeal – one of India's leading e-commerce websites –and, in January 2016, Teabox, an online premium Indian Tea seller, and CashKaro.com, a discount coupons and cash-back website. He has made small investments in both early and late stage companies in India, such as INR 0.95 Cr in Ola Cabs. In April 2015, it was reported that Tata had acquired a stake in Chinese smartphone startup Xiaomi. In 2016, he invested in Nestaway an online portal to find fully furnished flats for bachelors which later acquired Zenify to start family rental segment and online pet care portal, Dogspot. Tata Motors rolled out the first batch of Tigor Electric Vehicles from its Sanand Plant in Gujarat, regarding which Ratan Tata said, "Tigor indicates a willingness to fast-forward India's electric dream. The government has set an ambitious target to have only electric cars by 2030."Ratan Tata launched India's companionship startup for senior citizens, Goodfellows, in a bid to encourage intergenerational friendships."

In one of the most dramatic developments in the recent past, the board of directors of Tata Group on 24 October 2016 voted for the removal of its chairman Cyrus Mistry with immediate effect and made Ratan Tata the interim chairman, and in February 2017, Mistry was removed as a director for Tata Sons. The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) had decided in December 2019 that the removal of Cyrus Mistry as the Chairman of Tata Sons was illegal and that he should be reinstated. India's Supreme Court heard an appeal by the $111-billion conglomerate to quash the NCLAT order that directed the Tata group to rehire the man it fired as chairman. Ratan Tata is personally leading the charge in the case, and filed a separate petition challenging the ruling in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has stayed the NCLAT order that allowed Cyrus Mistry to be reinstated as Tata Sons chairman in January 2020. However the Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of Cyrus Mistry.

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