Ratan tata biography wikipedia

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He was also a great connoisseur of art. During the nine-month-long renovation, while the employees of Tata House were briefly shuttled between the headquarters and their temporary office, even the four- legged occupants were taken along. Tata then famously said, “If somebody puts a gun to my head, you either pull the trigger or you take your gun away because I will not move my head.”

Despite his age, Ratan Tata remained in step with the 21st century avant-garde of business.

In the past decade, Tata has mentored over 50 start-ups, including Lenskart, Zivame, Urban Company and Ola Electric. You see those same eyes, on a handsome face and rugged frame that would not have been out of place on stage in Parsi theatre—except that he never threw his voice. In 1912, Sir Ratan also extended financial help for setting up the department of social sciences at LSE.

The new department was known as the Ratan Tata Department of Social Sciences until 1919, when the school assumed responsibility for it.

Sir Ratan was fascinated by India’s past. Tata then went on an acquisition spree buying as many as three dozen small and big companies. Of late, in the winter of his life, he had also taken to sharing his past, via retro pics on Instagram.

“I would like to be remembered as a person who was responsible for some change in the way we look at things,” he said in a rare interaction with the media in 2021. Parsis are known the world over for their generous gifts. Religion, community or the region they came from were hardly of relevance. Tata House was ready in 1915, but Sir Ratan could live there only for a few months before he sailed for England for medical treatment, never to return.

The Sir Ratan Tata Foundation at LSE is now a permanent institution. The other friend, Behram Dubash, is now a veteran in the shipping industry and involved in his family construction business,” Ratan is quoted as saying.

Also Read | Ratan Tata: How the introvert, dark horse rose to become India’s most respected businessman – and how he stayed on top

Nano car ‘blunder’:

On the Nano car, an expert even dubbed it as “a monumental marketing blunder.” It was a problem that Ratan admitted to as well.

He was also in charge of the trading firm Tata & Co, which had branches in Kobe, Shanghai, Paris, New York and Rangoon, and traded in cotton, yarn, silk, pearls and rice.

A Warrior for Justice

Sir Ratan assisted elder brother Dorabji in the running of the various Tata businesses, but his real interests lay in social and philanthropic causes.

In his early years as helmsman, he laid down his motto: that the group was more important than individual companies. (It now stands at $165 billion.)

The protracted legal battle with his immediate successor Cyrus Mistry, who was sacked in 2016 following a boardroom coup, and the public battle with the Shapoorji Pallonji family, which owns 18 per cent in Tata Sons, probably was the sourest episode in his business life.

He worked briefly with Jones and Emmons in Los Angeles before returning to India in late 1962. Sir Ratan was knighted in 1916 for his services to humanity.

“Ratan, however, did not have any such concern.