Ratan Tata, retired chairman of one of the largest corporations in India, Tata Sons, has died – Reuters reports. He became famous for his bold acquisitions and dynamic business development. He was 86 years old.
Dad, who led the conglomerate as chairman for more than 20 years, was undergoing intensive care at a hospital in Mumbai, Reuters has learned from two sources with knowledge of his health.
Ratan Tata
After graduating in architecture from Cornell University in the US, he returned to India and in 1962 began working in the group that his great-grandfather had founded almost a hundred years earlier.
He worked in several Tata companies, including: in Telco, now Tata Motors Ltd, and Tata Steel Ltd, later made his mark on the company by wiping out losses and increasing market share in its National Radio & Electronics Company.
In 1991, he took over the helm of the conglomerate after his uncle JRD Tata stepped down. The passing of the baton came just as India embarked on radical reforms that opened its economy to the world and ushered in an era of high growth.
One of Ratan Tata's first actions was to limit the power of some heads of Tata Group companies by introducing a retirement age, promoting younger people to management positions and increasing control over the companies.
He founded the telecom company Tata Teleservices in 1996 and took over the IT company Tata Consultancy Services. However, in order to develop properly, the group decided that it needed to go beyond the borders of India. “It was about pursuing growth and changing the fundamental principles that allowed us to grow through acquisitions, which we had never done before,” he said in a 2013 interview at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Main photo source: PAP/EPA