A.

Guidelines for the book review :

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1. Approximately 7- 8 minutes per person when presented in class

2. Focus on key learnings from the book - quotes that stayed with you, an incident that you felt
showed the company/ leader in a good/ bad light, what did you take away from the book (a
personal reflection)
3. Upload a 1 page summary on canvas for the class to access after the review is shared in class
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Introduction :
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, not because it’s well written by Girish Kuber and
brilliantly translated by Vikrant Pande, but because it talks about the visionary mindset of four
generations that helped build a whole nation.
The book talks about the human side of the business conglomerate. How values and
understanding shape decisions. You read about their decisions everyday in the news but rarely
you see the motives behind it
Kuber starts the story in Navsari, a town in southern Gujarat, where Nusserwanji Tata, father of
Jamsetji Tata, was born in 1822. Although Jamsetji is widely regarded as the founder of the Tata
group, the seeds were firmly sown by his father when he decided to not follow his family
tradition of priesthood and instead headed off to Bombay with his wife Jeevanbai and their
young son Jamsetji who was born by then. The book then follows, almost chronologically, the
family’s journey of building a business empire.

Starting from Jamsetji’s earliest days as a trader of cotton and opium (which was legal back
then), then later setting up cotton mills in Nagpur and Mumbai. From laying the foundation of
building India’s first steel manufacturing company and the Taj Mahal hotel, both of which
fructified after his death and were nurtured and brought up by his two sons, Sir Dorabji Tata and
Sir Ratan Tata. Their legacy was continued by Jehangir Rantanji Dadabhoy (JRD) Tata who
forayed the group into aviation by setting up India’s first airline, Tata Aviation Services
(originally an air mail service) and later rechristened Air India as India’s first commercial airline.
And the group’s foray into chemicals and salt business, to name just a few. Finally Ratan Naval
Tata, who succeeded JRD as the group chairman, led the group’s entry into the information
technology sector, apart from building passenger cars.

● In 2017 , A Tata lifer, he had joined the company in 1987. He was appointed as a
Director on the board of Tata Sons on October 25, 2016.

Quotes :

1. J.R.D Tata used to say “ Live life a little dangerously

2. If you cannot make it greater, at least preserve it. Do not let things slide. Go on doing my
work and increasing it, but if you cannot, do not lose what we have already done. —
Jamsetji Tata to his son Dorab while on his deathbed.
3. JRD believed in doing things with perfection . He hates half-hearted attempts. “Indians
should learn to strive for excellence…if we start with being good , then we will never
produce the best” - JRD

The book has many interesting anecdotes of stories, struggles, trials and tribulations, and many
jubilations behind the family’s journey. By and large, three themes spring up.

Contributing to nation building : The first is how the Tatas contributed to nation building at
a time when the British were very much ruling India. The first World War hadn’t even broken
out, but that was a time when Nusserwanji and Jamsetji felt that India needed to be prepared for
the future and be industrialized. Where to start?

Although India used to produce and export cotton, it never produced cloth. The Tatas set up
cotton textile mills. A world-class hotel was needed in a growing city that had very few hotels
and largely catered to Englishmen. That led to the birth of the iconic Taj Mahal Hotel. Inspired
by a lecture that Jamsetji attended in London where it was said that a nation that understood
the value of iron would reap its weight in gold, he, along with the help of his two sons and his
brother-in-law’s son Ratanji Tata set up Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO; Tata Steel today).
Jamsetji persevered to set up Indian Institute of Science, a world-class education institute, though
sadly Jamsetji didn’t live long to see it being born. After India’s independence, JRD led the Tatas
into aviation, automobiles and chemicals.

Not just plant and machinery : The second theme that comes out strongly is how the Tatas
nurtured its employees. When Jamsetji set up Empress Mills in Nagpur, the city was laid back;
absenteeism was common. Jamsetji devised a retirement fund and an insurance policy to cover
medical costs for injuries incurred at work, among the earliest known examples of employee
welfare schemes in India. When TISCO was being set up, Jamsetji didn’t conceive of plant and
machinery. A township with wide roads, trees “that would absorb the heat”, football grounds,
temples, mosques and churches were part of the urban planning that went into setting up
TISCO; the town today is called Jamshedpur. Post-World War I when TISCO ran into rough
weather due to recession, there were concerns that the company might not be able to pay salaries.
Sir Dorab Tata (Jamsetji’s elder son) sold his personal assets and even asked his wife to sell her
jewels. He raised Rs 1 crore and another crore from Maharaja of Gwalior (a family friend and an
investor in TISCO) to ensure salaries to all were paid in time.
Coming to terms with politics : The third is about the Tatas, especially JRD, who struggled
with India’s political heads, particularly in the first two decades after India’s independence.
Aside from how JRD’s beloved Air India was nationalized - apart from Tata’s New India
Assurance- despite his protests, Kuber gives us an inside account of how JRD battled top
ministers’ whims at the time that threatened to, what JRD felt, slow India’s progress. JRD didn’t
agree with Gandhi’s and Nehru’s socialism, especially the disdain with which some of Nehru’s
ministers saw industrialists.

Incident : Kuber talks about a shocking incident. Two years after Air India was nationalized in
1953, Nehru was to attend the Afro-Asian conference in 1955. He was keen to fly Chinese
premier Chou En-lai from Hong Kong to Indonesia. He sent an Air India plane to pick him up.
The Chinese premier didn’t turn up at the airport. Some Chinese bureaucrats came and the plane
flew away to Indonesia. However, a time bomb aboard exploded and the plane went down. JRD
was devastated. There were only three survivors. Later, when a senior AI pilot, close to JRD, met
with Chou En-lai, it transpired that the Chinese knew about the danger and instead wondered
why India didn’t know about it. Despite this, Nehru sent another AI plane to get the Chinese
premier to Indonesia.

JRD’s struggle with politicians and the license raj continued with Indira Gandhi and Morarji
Desai, despite being close friends with the Nehru family all along.

TURBULENT TIMES — 1971-1974 : In an era of license-permit raj, Ratan Tata struggled to

put the NELCO business back on track. Critics said he was out of depth. Barely 2% market share
and mounting losses slowed the turnaround of the company. Just when Tata managed to put
things right at NELCO, Emergency was declared and quickly NELCO was near collapse again.
In such a backdrop, Ratan Tata joined the board of directors of Tata Sons Ltd in 1974.

Core values:

Business, as I have seen it, places one great demand on you: it needs you to self-impose a
framework of ethics, values, fairness and objectivity on yourself at all times.” - Ratan N Tata,
2006

Tata has always been a values-driven organization. These values continue to direct the growth
and business of Tata companies. The five core Tata values underpinning the way we do business
are:

● Integrity : Tatas are fair, honest, transparent and ethical in their conduct;
everything they do must stand the test of public scrutiny.
● Responsibility: They’ll integrate environmental and social principles in
their businesses, ensuring that what comes from the people goes back to the
people many times over
● Excellence: They are passionate about achieving the highest standards of
quality, always promoting meritocracy.
 ● Pioneering : Tatas will be bold and agile, courageously taking on
challenges, using deep customer insight to develop innovative solutions
● Unity : They will invest in their people and partners, enable continuous
learning, and build caring and collaborative relationships based on trust and
mutual respect.

Key learnings:

1. Dream Big : It is important as an entrepreneur to be able to dream big and have big
ambitions. Tata Finance Limited showed with its rapid growth and bright visage to be a
one-stop financial services shop, the likes of India had never seen before..

2. TAKE RISKS: "I don't believe in taking right decisions, I take decisions and make
them right" - Ratan Tata. You should not afraid of taking risks instead you should take
a calculated risk and move forward to your goal even Mark Zuckerberg says "The biggest
risk is not taking any risk"
3. Have Courage & Believe in yourself: There will be times that nobody will believe in
you. Tata Motors had no dearth of naysayers who refused to believe in an Indian car and
yet they built India’s first indigenous car.

4. Fall down, but always get back up: Tata Motors itself is a great example of how a
company can stumble but also pulls itself up quickly. They built a new version of Indica
that was a success

5. VALUE YOUR TEAM: Without Teamwork and support no company has ever succeeded
in doing anything. Also, there is a quote from Sir Ratan Tata
"If you want to walk fast, walk alone but if you want to walk far, walk together"

6. There’s a silver lining around the dark clouds: There will always be problems and
issues but how you act as a company through them will bring you closer together, and
stronger.

What I learnt :
Trust is Key : “A good workplace should create an environment with mutual trust and
confidence among all stakeholders. If such an environment is not created, corporate governance
will get impacted,”

Why Do People Matter? : The first generation started with Jamsetji Tata when he sowed the
seeds of Tata values in every business he grew.
J.R.D Tata, who later took the big responsibility of the empire, paid keen interest in the welfare
of workers. He believed that people ran the business and we were mere decision takers. His
office doors were open to everyone, even a janitor, as he considered every person working in the
organization as equal. He didn’t consider anyone special.
Due to these values, a business became an empire and the empire took care of more than 13 lakh
families around the country.
No Business Is Beyond Saving
When Cyrus Mistry was given hold of the empire for a short span, he overlooked the idea of
saving a business, however it performed.
He started closing shops of every business under Tata that either didn’t show promise in the
future or lacked profit. Before him, Ratan Tata showed determination in spreading the business
around the world by either joining hands with local lords or extracting funds from trusts and
other businesses that showed profit.
He didn’t let businesses die just because they weren’t performing at their best for a short period.
He believed in nurturing a business similarly like a child. So the child grows up to be a fine
gentleman in the future.
Focused On Building A Nation
If you look at the projects undertaken by Tata, you’d see that projects such as hydroelectric
power generation plants, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, Air India, Nano were all a part of
a solution to major problems back in the day.
Tatas have been problem solvers since their inception. If they wanted they would have invested
in money making businesses. But, they chose a different path that built a nation and helped many
families thrive during the independence fight of India.