The Tata Plan
Update — January 1985

In the absence of a unifying or synergy force, the companies in the "Tata group" were not taking unified look at the future and possibly missing out on opportunities.

Under the stewardship of Ratan Tata, the Tatas have forged an ambitious Strategic Plan which could well place them and the nation on the hi-tech map of the world. BASUDEV DASS unfolds the plan and explores its many facets.

One appointment that went down in corporate history as the most discussed - inviting comment from a number of Indian and international publications - was the appointment of Ratan Naval Tata as chairman of Tata Industries Ltd. (TIL), three years ago.

On that day , 21st October, 1981, while the world was shocked by the dramatic assassination of Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt, at the national day parade in Cairo, 44year old Ratan Tata had much to celebrate. That was the day he was informed of his elevation to the top spot in TIL.

TIL, which served as the managing agency for the Tata group of companies for well over four decades, faded from the limelight with the abolition of the managing agency system on 9th April, 1970. Today it is once again throbbing with life. With Ratan Tata at the helm of affairs, TIL is on the threshold of catapulting the Tatas into the brand new world of "sunrise industries".

Before the appointment, Ratan Tata was a relatively obscure foggier to the world at large, known, if only as the man who had spent the previous decade trying to make the best of a bad job at the National Radio and Electronics Company Ltd. (NELCO), in an attempt to resurrect the ailing company. Following the appointment, which moved Tata to say that, "I was as pleasantly surprised - it was as if my name had been something else...." fame was literally thrust upon the publicity-shy Tata.

Conveying the message: One of Tata's first acts, on moving into his new position, was to call for a reassessment of all Tata business, and to attempt at formalising and rekindling the "group spirit" among the constituent Tata companies. TIL served as a convenient vehicle for conveying the message.

TIL was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd. Soon after he became chairman of TIL, Ratan Tata proceeded to make TIL a separate entity. In 1983 he made Tata Sons disinvest down to 25 per cent of the equity, of TIL. He then called upon prominent Tata companies to subscribe to TIL equity. As a result TISCO, TELCO, Indian Hotels Co., Tata Oil Mills Co., Tata Chemicals and Voltas became shareholders of TIL and the subscribed capital of TIL increased from Rs. 75 lakhs to around Rs. 6 crores. "The idea was to create a spirit of ownership if TIL among the group companies and get some teeth into TIL," says Tata.

Says Tata, "Today we often have a situation where we have two or more Tata companies trying for the same business, with each one tripping over itself in the marketplace. In the process our interest is diluted and resources are frittered away in three different directions. If there is a strategic plan, then we can integrate these into one activity.

Today, forty months later, a breeze of change has begun to blow along the corridors of Bombay House the stone structure that houses the Tata headquarters on Homi Mody Street in Fort, Bombay. Not a few people are waiting for that breeze to become a strong wind.

Signs of Tata emerging as a man who means what he says were evident when he moved into lines of business, unconventional by Tata standards, and set up a leasing-cum hire-purchase company. Tata Finance Limited, a leisure-time products company, CBS Gramophone Records and Tapes (India) Limited in 1984 and 1983 respectively. Several other projects in high-tech areas such as biotechnology and artificial intelligence are on the drawing boards and, behind each of them the driving force is Tata.

To achieve his stated objectives, it was necessary to reactivate Tata Industries, which had become moribund when the managing agency system was terminated. The system was scrapped by an amendment to the Companies Act in April 1970, mainly because it bred serious malpractices in company promoters-turned-managing-agents had started indiscriminate transfer of funds from one group company to another with the purpose of siphoning away funds.

Says Tata, "After the managing agency system was abolished, the Tatas, who have lived according to the law, took the letter of the law as it was meant to be. They didn't try any clandestine method of managing companies.

In the bargain TIL, through which the Tata group of companies was nurtured and managed, became a shell although all the chief executives of the Tata companies continued to sit on the TIL board. "It could just as well have been dissolved, but it was kept alive. "However, considering the borderline existence that TIL lived, there was really no central unit outside the various autonomous companies to plan and control the group. Focus shifted to individual companies in the group and growth, emanated from these companies, not from strategic planning at the group level.
Comments Tata, "Where we lost out was that there was no central focusing. Decisions on entering new areas fell into the priorities of the operating companies." Thus in the past 15 years, with control divested from the group and vested in individual companies, the Tatas stopped functioning effectively as a group. For all practical purpose, except for the use of the Tata name, these companies were on their own.

A unified plan: In the absence of a unifying or synergy force, the companies in the "Tata group" were not taking unified look at the future and possibly missing out on opportunities. So it was left to Ratan Tata to forge a strategic plan.

In late 1982, Ratan Tata and his planning cell comprising two executive assistants, A.S. Subbaraman and P. Sarkar, started initiating what was to become a strategic plan for the Tata organisation. Both Subbaraman and Sarkar are engineers with management qualifications and joined Tatas after selection by Tata Administrative Services.

To help them out, Tata called in a management consultant S.K. Bhattacharyya, chief executive of Management Structure and Systems Pvt. Ltd., Bombay. Bhattacharyya gave an overall direction and acted as a sounding board. The management consultant had earlier lent his services to be corporate planning effort of several companies, notably MRF (Madras) and Larsen and Toubro (Bombay).

For purpose of the strategic plan the TIL chairman matrixed the Tata organisations into six key business groups representing the entire gamut of the Tatas' business operations.

"We added hi-tech and international business to the list," says Tata. "Then we sat down and drew up plans about where we should be and where we should make an exit and produced the first cut report, a start of a much more detailed exercise."

Further, each business group was assigned to a sub-committee comprising a chairman and other members drawn from senior directors of Tata companies.

With an almost missionary zeal, Tata launched the planning process. However, the plan got delayed for a number of reasons. Against a schedule time span of six months, it took almost a year for the planning process to be completed and for the plan to be documented.

Tata was away in the US for four months to attend to his mother who was critically ill. Besides, the plan coordinators (Tata's planning cell) found it a daunting task to get together members of the various sub-committees set up for the plan. Involved, as they are, in the running of the companies they head, the committee members found it difficult to spare long stretches of time for the planning process.

"In such a thing one expects people to apply themselves and not delegate their work to others in the organisation," says Tata. Accordingly, the planning process necessitated that chief executives spend two to three hours in discussions across the table. "The endeavour of the exercise was to enable people to take off their individual companies' hats and don the hats of their business areas. In other words if we were looking at engineering, there would be people from TELCO. Indian Tube Company (ITC) - we wanted people to wear the hat of the engineering group and not of TELCO or ITC. It took some time to make people adopt a different approach."

Joint meeting: By March 1984 the detailed plan was duly documented, and a synopsis of the plan was extracted for easy reference. Finally, in April, Ratan Tata made a presentation of his strategic plan, which has a horizontal of 10 years to a joint meeting of the boards of directors of Tata Sons Ltd. and Tata Industries Ltd. The audience comprised all senior directors including JRD Tata, chairman, Tata Sons, Nani Palkhivala and Naval Tata.

"By and large, everyone agreed that it was good to have a plan," says Tata "It showed up several areas which we were not looking at before; in fact, it provided us a thrust in the hi-tech business where, hitherto we had not directed a thrust. So nobody had any negative comment on the plan".

To meet individual directors from Bombay House who sat in on the plan when it was being formulated seemed an obvious step for this correspondent. However, some Tata directors were reluctant to meet this correspondent. M.H. Mody, director in charge of Tata-Burroughs Ltd. could not find the time, whereas K. Chinappa, vice chairman of the Tata Electric Companies, directed this correspondent to Ratan Tata himself. S. A. Sabavala, vice chairman, Tata Iron and Steel Co. Ltd., Freddie Mehta, executive chairman of the Forbes Group and N.A. Soonawala found the time for discussion.

Says Mehta, "Long range planning gives a house like Tata, a chance to dovetail its plans with the overall planning in the country instead of retiring into a shell." According to him the reason why he agreed to participate in Ratan Tata's plan was because he could see that corporate planning need not be an exercise in influencing only, management policies; "It can also help us play our role in influencing society."

Soonawala, financial adviser to the Tata group, is quite certain that planning through a centralised agency like Tata Industries stands to benefit the group immensely. "It has been a long time since the Tatas, as a group, conceived an individual plan," he says. "A centralised agency in the group can plan out whatever new type of industrial activities the Tatas decide to take up, it can help generate new ideas which may not have occurred to individual companies in the group.

Sabavala, who is also chairman of the metals sub-committee, voices a similar opinion on the benefits of strategic planning. "Yes, there is every necessity for such a plan. For a group of 25 companies which go under the Tata banner, planning is a necessity because external conditions are changing swiftly," he says. "We have to constantly project ourselves into the future, and the planning exercise comes in handy. It tells us where we should be and accordingly help us set ourselves certain targets . Ratan Tata's idea was that each plan should mesh with individual company plans."

On the chopping block: While the Tata strategic plan (see box) makes some useful suggestions about new businesses that the Tata companies could enter, it also gives a critical look at some existing lines of business where the Tatas have suffered hard knocks. Although full details are not available, if one could hazard a guess, the product lines that have been placed on the chopping block would have to include textiles, where the Tatas have taken a bad clobbering. It is common knowledge that the Tatas have also fared poorly in consumer products such as soaps, detergents and edible oils.

Says a former Tata manager, "The Tatas, as a group, have operated not unlike a government department. They have characteristically plodded on in areas in which they have been running up losses for years. This is very much evident in the group's textile business comprising four companies - The Tata Mills, Swadeshi Mills, Ahmedabad Advance and Central India Spinning."

"Unlike other business groups they have not divested these mills. Nor have the management's paid heed to changing markets with timely modernisation and replacement of machinery".

Instead of viewing the operations as the business of making cloth, it was viewed as cotton textile business. This narrowed the focus when the consumer tastes and preferences shifted from cotton cloth to synthetics. The Tata textile mills were left to face a demand recession, which they could not respond to quickly. Newcomers such as Dhirubhai Ambani's Reliance Textiles continue to do well because they have identified their business accurately and can cater to consumer demand as it changes - or even influence consumer demand.

The strategic plan lays special emphasis on hi-tech industries. And that just about explains the underlying thrust recommended for every business group.

Pioneers always: As Tata puts it, "My, motivation in favour of hi-tech industries stemmed from the fact that the Tatas have always been pioneers in industrial activity. At the turn of this century, the group set up what were then pioneering industries such as steel and electricity - both high risk areas."

According to Tata, India today is in an era of another industrial revolution. "However, this one is not capital-intensive, it is skill-intensive."
Under the circumstances, it occurred to him to look into new areas. "I thought instead of going into traditional industry, why not focus on skill-intensive industries? Then you are really looking at human resources and success depends on whether one can provide motivation. Besides, if one achieves results, the capital involved to do that would be relatively small," comments Tata.

Another reason which made Tata look at hi-tech industries closely is government policy, which constraints large houses from diversifying into traditional areas. "I reasoned that leapfrogging into new areas did not seem a bad idea because those are areas which nine out of ten people would tend to ignore. And, in all likelihood the government might even encourage such a step. So I decided to explore the frontier industries."

Tata has isolated the hi-tech group because he thinks that giving it to any existing company might kill it, since it would be subordinate to the existing business of that company. "So I have made it the focus of TIL".

Thus he has personally taken charge of frontier industries - bio-technology, electronics and advanced materials "All these areas are impacting all walks of life," says Tata. "Bio-technology has impacted plants and crops and pharmaceuticals and therefore, food and medicines and the health of people. Electronics too is going to change the lives of people in India just as it has elsewhere."

The difficult aspect of the planning exercise is making plans work. How is Ratan Tata going about achieving his ambitions? Before the plan was initiated Tata had already set up Tata ELXSL in 1980 for manufacturing computers in Singapore. In India, besides devoting considerable time to NELCO and a cotton textile company- he established CBS (India) and Tata Finance in 1983 and 1984 respectively.

To get his hi-tech concepts to hit pay dirt, he evolved a strategy, which he claims works. He believes it would be necessary "to create linkages with some of the advanced companies that are in these fields abroad and forging joint ventures and or buying technology for India.

According to him the key would be to get a foreign associate to make an investment in a similar company in the US or get Indian people into that operation to participate at the development stage and then buy technology rights for India.

Ambitious projects: "It works", asserts Tata. "Tata ELXSL, Singapore is one such example. We have similar plans to produce crops, plants and foodgrains genetically in India.

One ambitious project which is part of the overall strategic plan involves setting up article intelligence (AI) Labs. AI is still in a nascent stage even in the US. "It is an entirely skill-intensive and has a long gestation period of around four to five years. What we might do is establish linkages with AI labs in the US on an exchange basis. Applications may not be immediately available but as they emerge, we will be in a position to be leader in harnessing AI knowhow for commercial applications for India.

Despite the aura that surrounds hi-tech industries, they are not capital-intensive. According to Tata, the capital investment required in these industries is in the range of Rs. 5-20 crores. And finance should not pose any problem.

Apart from banks, financial institutions and the capital market, Tata expects to raise a portion of the funds required to set up hi-tech industries in India from contributions by Tata companies. "I don't know what the capacity of various Tata companies in terms of outside investment would be. But I do venture to say that I see no problem in raising Rs. 4-5 crores internally at a time, provided the project is right and of interest to the companies. Individual companies (in the group) invest more than that in their own projects."

Another project which is likely to see the light of day is a proposed joint venture between Tata Chemicals and NELCO for the manufacture of state-of-the-art computerised process control systems. The company, called Tata Process Controls, has finalised a collaboration agreement with Yamatake-Honeywell, Japan.

According to Tata, equipment manufacture in this project is a small part of the deal. "But the skills we expect to create in software, process technology, systems integrations and analysis - those are the skills we plan to acquire. We envisage manufacture of some proprietor elements. We won't try to make everything - instruments, controls - but only make a small core of the system and then do the integration."

Potential in printing: Tata's bag has more new projects stowed away. An area which has so far been wholly reserved for the public sector is the security printing business (printing of cheques, negotiable instruments, etc.) The Tatas plan to enter this areas too.

"The Reserve Bank of India has decided to mechanise clearing of cheques to expedite the process, and we have identified this as a potential business areas," says Tata. According to him, once the Tatas get a foothold in this business, the group would take up new opportunities in printing travellers cheques, airlines tickets, etc.

And Tata believes in wasting no time. A company has already been incorporated for the security printing business. "We have a collaboration with Bradbury Wilkinson, UK, who have substantial share in the security printing market all over the world, and we have set up a company called Tata Bradbury Wilkinson Ltd." Clearance from the government is awaited.

There are a couple of other projects which could be very profitable. One is a joint venture between Forex-Neptune Schlumberger and Tata Industries for oil field equipment to meet the country's onshore and offshore oil requirement. A memorandum of understanding was signed in mid-1984. The other is a telecommunications project for which an informal agreement was signed with a British company recently.

If these projects are any indication, Ratan Tata's strategic plan, ready now for almost a year, is one of the best things that could have happened to the Tatas. In the past decade the growth seems to have no direction. As a result some senior directors were not aware of new investments made by the group. Confesses one such senior director, "It was only a few months ago that I discovered that the Tata's have an interest in the pharmaceutical company, Merck ShareDohme Ltd."

Implementation: The important question is will Ratan Tata be able to implement the rest of the plan? The debate is open to as much speculation as the earlier succession issue.

Says Tata. "At the presentation of the plan, we did seek an acceptance from participants, and there was no disagreement. I am starting to see acceptance. "Tata hopes to implement the plan through what he calls the "business policy group". As a next step he proposes to establish eight business policy groups which will implement the plan. The members of the groups will be drawn from the business areas they cover. For example, the engineering group will have members drawn in the engineering business, such as Telco, Voltas etc.

Thus the plan tries to introduce a new approach to the group's top management in which the planners stop looking at Tata Operations from the company point of view and start thinking of the business group angle. The objective is to cut through barriers of allegiance to individual companies.

Today if there is uncertainty in the air, it is due to the peculiar equity ad power structure in the Tata Group. As is well known, JRD Tata, the 80-year old partiarch, has ruled more by consent and permission than by ownership control. This is because the Tata family's holding in the group companies is very small.

Over the years, senior Tata directors have carved out important and powerful niches for themselves in the group. Individuals like Russi Mody, Darbari Seth, Freddie Mehta have their own power centres in the group.

While Mody presides over several companies representing the Tata interest in eastern India - TISCO, Indian Tube Co. Tata Robins Fraser, Tata Yodogawa - with group sales exceeding Rs. 1,000 crores. Darbari Seth and Freddie Mehta head companies such as Tata Chemicals and Tata Oil Mills and Rallis India and the Forbes group respectively. All of them are proven executives who have put in several years of service with an unquestionable record of achievement to their names. Will they offer resistance to the implementation of the plan?

Says J.E. Talaulicar, joint managing director, TELCO and chairman of the subcommittee on the engineering group, who has spent all his working life of 29 years with the Tata group. "The planning was indeed a useful exercise and, TELCO has already taken action on some of its recommendations. For example, in March this year, we will be coming into the market with hydraulic excavators in collaboration with Hitachi, Japan, an output of the planning exercise.

However, he believes that Tata Industries cannot plan for the entire group. "Synergy for the entire group is not possible. It is too gigantic a task. After all, come what may, my own company's interest comes above every other consideration and not any centralised group's. Such a plan is useful because it throws up ideas - but implementation has to be left to the individual companies."

JRD Tata is aware that his nephew does not command the allegiance of some top executives in the group. In an interview to an Amercian magazine some time ago, he admitted as much. "Ratan has the talent and now has been given the means to acquire the position of confidence that will show that he is fit to be a leader. I would like to continue the tradition of having a Tata lead this group. But I believe that the position has to be earned."

Judging by his achievements in the past year, Ratan Tata is well on his way to prove his detractors wrong.

Who is Ratan Tata?
Ratan Tata has largely succeeded in keeping a low profile for the better part of his 22-year exposure to Indian industry, giving an opportunity to many executives in Bombay House, the Tata group's headquarters, to label him "an unknown quantity". Coincidentally, the man in whose shoes he has stepped into - JRD Tata - was also a surprise candidate when he became chairman of Tata Sons and its wholly-owned subsidiary Tata Industries in 1938, after the sudden death of the chairman, Nowroji Saklatwala.

Like his illustrious predecessor, Ratan Tata, previously a director with TIL, ascended the top rung of TIL with no claim to any distinguished record of achievement to his credit. The senior Tata too was only a professional pilot before he joined up with the Tata group. He became a director with Tata Sons, a position he rose to after a few years of internship in the group, which then consisted of a steel company, a cotton mill and upcoming electricity generating companies.

Son of Naval Tata (a second cousin of JRD Tata) and his first wife, the late (Sunoo) Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, Ratan Tata (like JRD) was schooled in the Cathedral and John Cannon School, Bombay. In 1954, he left India for higher studies in the US. At Cornell University, New York he acquired degrees in architectural engineering and structural engineering.

Uneventful: "Soon after I took up a job with Jones and Emmons Co. an architect's firm in Los Angeles," says Tata. "I was quite happy with my work and, given a choice, I would have remained in the US." However, father Naval Tata beckoned him to return and in end-1962 he was back in India.

For almost a decade, life with the Tata enterprises was uneventful. Far from playing a pivotal role after three years of apprenticeship with TELCO and TISCO, his career seemed to be meandering with no indication of the shape of things to come. In 1968, he returned to Bombay after his stint with TISCO culminating in his becoming technical assistant to managing director P. Nanavati. He was then sent to Australia the following year to set up a joint venture with Dalgety Ltd. "However, the venture did not take off, and it wound up operations by 1972-73," says Tata.

Then followed a stint with Tata Consultancy Services in 1970, at the behest of its managing director, P.M. Agarwal. Again things did not pick up, and Tata, an amazingly frank individual, makes no bones about it. "I can't say I was responsible for developing software business," he recalls about his stay in TCS. "I was pushing papers for Mr. Agarwal to get something going. I did not know at the time in which direction I was going within the Tata group. I wanted to go back to the US."

Around that time (1971) - NELCO chairman K. Chinappa, asked him to join up in NELCO, which was in deep trouble. "I decided to join the company, and I did some homework before taking up the assignment.

According to Tata, NELCO was in a deep financial crunch. "For a period it was two steps forward and one step backward. It stood a good chance of being liquidated for want of funds. The decision to support NELCO goes to the credit of JRD Tata. Since 1981, after Mr. Chansarkar came in, the fortunes of the company changed." It finally returned to the dividend list for the year 1983-84, declaring 10 per cent dividend.

With the NELCO experience behind him, Tata is currently consolidating on the gains registered by the company in addition to spearheading the group's imminent entry into the sunrise industries.

Strategic Planning
Today American companies are bidding goodbye to their strategic or corporate planners who they had expected to create miracles, which didn't materialise. Corporate planning departments are being pruned ruthlessly.

Two Fortune 500 companies, General Electric and General Motors, slashed the number of corporate planners from 50 to 25 and 25 to 15 respectively, recently.

A growing number of Indian companies, on the other hand, are becoming believes in this exercise.

Strategic planning has spread fast through top-rung Indian companies such as Larsen and Toubro Ltd., Voltas Ltd. (which introduced planning in 1981-82), Tata Industries Ltd. (1983-84), Rallis India Ltd. (1982-83) and MRF Ltd. In his book, The Mind of the Strategist, journalist turned management guru Peter Drucker says, "The drafting of a strategy is simply the logical extension of one's usual thinking processes. It is a matter of long-term philosophy, not of short-term expedient thinking." Nor is it, by any means, a matter of forecasting the future. "Strategic planning is necessary precisely because we cannot forecast," Drucker says.

Strategic planning consists of giving management an idea of where the company or group is currently positioned. And, by an exercise of identifying opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses (in the external environment as well as within the company group) it indicates where it should be in the future.

The Planners
In mid-1983, in consultation with his colleagues on the board of Tata Industries Ltd. (TIL), Ratan Tata appointed eight sub-committees, each of which was chaired by a TIL director. For this purpose, the total business operations of the companies that come under the loosely defined Tata group were slotted into eight business groups, viz., consumer; chemicals and agro; engineering; hi-tech; international; metals; services and utilities.

Each sub-committee was assigned the task of preparing detailed reports on the current position of ever business group in terms of market shares, profits, etc. divided productwise.

The chairman of the committee was assisted by other members who served on the committee. The metals committee for instance, comprised, besides the chairman, E. Gonda (till recently managing director, metals division of Ahmedabad Advance Mills Ltd.) K.S. Hinge (TOMCO), Syamal Gupta (managing director, Tata Exports Ltd.) and J. J. Irani (TISCO).

The Recommendations
Ratan Tata's strategic plan was put together on the basis of reports filed by the eight sub-committees appointed to look into each of the eight business areas-engineering, metals, chemicals and agro, consumer services, utilities, hi-tech and international business. A brief synposis of some recommendations are given below:

• Utilities: The sub-committee was of the view that the thrust should be to maintain the position of leadership in technology and other aspects of power generation and supply. It also seeks entry into new technology intensive utility areas such as bulk transportation. Some examples: slurry pipelines, central computer banks providing real time services, satellite based communications networks operations contracts for operations management of utilities in countries where skilled manpower does not exist.
  
  
• Services: The sub-committee has recommended that the tertiary sector will account for the highest growth rate (agricultural, industry). Therefore the areas recommended are skill and capital-intensive. They include oil exploration services, specialised financial services (leasing, investment banking, etc.), services with future potential such as computer software, commercial hospital services, specialised construction services and, of course, continued growth in hotels.
  
  
• Consumer products: The objectives will be leadership at the premium end in selected growth markets and pulling out of areas where there is no meaningful future for reasons of viability, the small scale sector coming in, high excise, etc.
  In this area, the sub-committee has recommended that Tatas should look at some potentially high profit lines of business such as health care, leisuretime products (cassettes videos, sound systems), "convenience goods" (refrigerators, air-conditioners, ovens, kitchen appliances).
  
  
• Engineering: To achieve a larger presence in the growth and technology-intensive areas is the stated objective of this group. Emphasis will be paid to relatively new areas such as process control systems, CNC machine tools, and process equipment and knowhow. It also recommends that the group's existing position in vehicles manufacture should be re-inforced through consolidation and diversification.
  
  
• Hi-tech: Under this group, which is in the personal care of Ratan Tata, are some highly advanced industries. They are categorised into (a) advanced electronics, (b) advance materials, (c) bio-technology and (d) alternative energy sources.
  Some work has already been initiated and a company called Tata ELXSI was incorporated in Singapore in 1980. This company manufactures large computers (64-bit micro processors). The Tatas have also made plans to identify sources of technology (and method of absorbing it) for "advance materials" which are substitutes for conventional metals - being lighter but stronger and are used in making cars, furniture, ships, etc.
  Bio-technology is being perceived as a high-growth industry. Plans are afoot to set up a company which will undertake research in bio-technology. It's activities would relate to agriculture. The idea is to set up facilities outside India as it is considered easier to conduct developmental work abroad. But the fruits of bio-technology will eventually be transferred for the benefit of Indian agriculture.
  
  
• International Business: The objectives of this group is to seek substantial growth, for which the existing export organisations in the group are being suitably restructured. Currently there are several Tata companies which are engaged in international business. The plan involves structuring management to maximise international group business.
  
  
• Metals: Along with the engineering group, metals business of the Tata group accounts for almost half the group's sales. The important place that this group occupies today will be maintained, judging by the recommendations of the metals committee. The report sees much scope in higher value added items such as special steels, which have a large market in the automobile, defence and oil exploration industries. The Sub-committee has also recommended that the group consider diversification into power metallurgy.
  
  
• Chemicals and agro: No information was available on the recommendations of the sub-committee in charge of this group.