Ratan Naval Tata

Born December : 28, 1937 (age 73)

Residence : Colaba, Mumbai, India

Nationality : Indian

Ethnicity : Parsi

Alma : Cornell University

mater : Harvard University

Occupation : Chairman of Tata Group

Awards :

Padma Bhushan (2000)

Padma Vibhushan (2008)
Order of the British Empire (2009) Signature

Tata at Trident Hotel, April 2010.

Ratan Naval Tata is the present Chairman of Tata Sons and therefore,
Tata Group. He is also the chairman of major Tata companies such as
Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Power, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata
Tea, Tata Chemicals, The Indian Hotels Company and Tata
Teleservices.

Early life and Education

Ratan Tata was born to Naval Tata and Soonoo Commisariat in the Tata family, a prominent family
belonging to the Parsi community. He is the great-grandson of Tata group founder Jamsedji Tata. After
his parents separated in 1944, he was brought up by his grandmother Lady Navajbai and did his
schooling in Mumbai from Campion School. Later, he enrolled in Cornell University, where he earned a
B.S in architecture with structural engineering in 1962, and has also completed the Advanced
Management Program at Harvard Business School

Career at Tata Sons

When he returned to India in 1962 after turning down a job with IBM on the advice of JRD, he was sent
to Jamshedpur to work on the shop floor at Tata Steel with other blue-collar employees, shovelling
limestone and handling the blast furnace. In 1971, he was appointed the Director of National Radio and
Electronics (Nelco), which was in dire straits when he came on board: with losses of 40% and barely 2%
share of the consumer electronics market. However, just when he turned it around (from 2% to 25%
market share), the Emergency was declared. A weak economy and labour issues compounded the
problem and Nelco was quickly near collapse again.

For his next assignment, in 1977 he was asked to turn around the sick Empress Mills, which he did.
However, he was refused a Rs 50 lakh investment required to make the textile unit competitive. Empress
Mills floundered and was finally closed in 1986.

In 1981, JRD Tata stepped down as Tata Industries chairman, naming Ratan as his successor. He was
heavily criticized for lacking experience in running a company of the scale of Tata Industries.

In 1991, he was appointed group chairman of the Tata group. As group chairman, he has been
responsible for converting "the corporate commonwealth" of different Tata-affiliated companies into a
cohesive company. He has been responsible for the acquisition of Tetley, Jaguar Land Rover and Corus,
which have turned Tata from a largely India-centric company into a global business, with 65% revenues
coming from abroad. He also pushed the development of Indica and the Nano. He is widely credited for
the success of the Tata Group of companies, especially after the liberalization of controls after the
1990s.

Recognition and Honorary Appointments

Ratan Tata serves in senior capacities in various organisations in India and he is a member of the Prime
Minister's Council on Trade and Industry. Tata is on the board of governors of the East-West Center, the
advisory board of RAND's Center for Asia Pacific Policy and serves on the program board of the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation's India AIDS initiative.

Ratan Tata's foreign affiliations include membership of the international advisory boards of the
Mitsubishi Corporation, the American International Group, JP Morgan Chase and Booz Allen Hamilton.
He is also a member of the board of trustees of the RAND Corporation, University of Southern
California and of his alma mater, Cornell University. He also serves as a board member on the Republic
of South Africa's International Investment Council and is a member of the Asia-Pacific advisory
committee for the New York Stock Exchange. In 2010, he joined BMB Group as an advisory board
member.

He has also been appointed to the following honorary distinctions:

 Honorary economic advisor to Hangzhou city in the Zhejiang province of China.

 FIRST Award for Responsible Capitalism.
 26th Robert S. Hatfield Fellow in Economic Education, awarded by Cornell University
 recipient of the NASSCOM Global Leadership Awards (2008)
 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy (2007), on behalf of the Tata family.[10][11]
 honorary citizenship of Singapore
 honorary doctorate in business administration by the Ohio State University, honorary doctorate
in technology by the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, honorary doctorate in science by
the University of Warwick, honorary fellowship by the London School of Economics. and
honorary Doctor of Law from the University of Cambridge.
 honoured as 'Businessman of the Decade' by The Federation of Indo-Israeli Chambers of
Commerce (2010)
 Legend in Leadership award from Yale (2010)