Ratan N. Tata
Ratan Naval Tata is an Indian industrialist and a former chairman of Tata Sons. Mr. Tata is also one of the largest philanthropists in the world, having donated around 60-65% of his income to charity. He was also chairman of Tata Group, from 1990 to 2012, and again, as interim chairman, from October 2016 through February 2017, and continues to head its charitable trusts. He is the recipient of two of the highest civilian awards of India, the Padma Vibhushan (2008) and Padma Bhushan (2000).
Ratan Tata was born in Bombay, now Mumbai on 28 December 1937, he is a scion of the Tata family, and great-grandson of Jamsetji Tata, the founder of Tata Group. He is an alumnus of the Cornell University College of Architecture and Harvard Business School through the Advanced Management Program that he completed in 1975. He joined his company in 1961 when he used to work on the shop floor of Tata Steel, and was the apparent successor to J. R. D. Tata upon the latter's retirement in 1991. During Ratan Tata's chairmanship of 21 years, revenues grew over 40 times, and profit, over 50 times. He got Tata Tea to acquire Tetley, Tata Motors to acquire Jaguar Land Rover, and Tata Steel to acquire Corus, and Tata Chemicals to acquire Brunner Mond – all in the UK; Daewoo Commercial Vehicles by Tata Motors in South Korea; NatSteel in Singapore and Millennium Steel in Thailand by Tata Steel; and General Chemical Industrial Products by Tata Chemicals, Eight O’ Clock Coffee by Tata Tea and Tyco Global Network by Tata Communications in the US, in an attempt to turn Tata from a largely India-centrist group into a global business.
Some of the key turning points in the career of Ratan Tata:
