The fire fighter
Gita Piramal chronicles the seasoning of the gentleman among the Tatas — Ratan Tata
Business Standard — December 7, 1996

After his graduation, Ratan was inclined to stay on in the US. There's wasn't much to draw him back to India. Ratan was happily installed in a flat in an apartment complex with a swimming pool in Los Angeles. His Cornell degree easily helped land a job. He could look forward to furthering a career there. Lady Navajbai thought differently and he couldn't say no to her pleadings. He left Los Angeles with an American girlfriend to follow him but she apparently didn't come to India finally.

Tata has never married. In Bombay, he would date on and off, more off than on, and once he even got engaged, but broke if off before the cards could be printed. Without a family and children, what motivates him? " I have asked myself this quite often. I don't have a monetary ownership in the company in which I work and I am not given to propagating the position I am in. I ask myself why I am doing this and I think it is perhaps the challenge. If I had an ideological choice, I would probably want to do something more for the uplift of the people of India. I have strong desire not to make money but to see happiness created in a place where there isn't."

A formal invitation from JRD to join the Tatas arrived. Ratan's acceptance letter was becomingly proper: " Words could never adequately express my sincere gratitude and appreciation for your decision — I shall attempt to express my thanks by serving the firm as best I can, and to do all I can to make sure that you will not regret your decision." At this point of time, there was no question of Ratan rising to the top of the Tata tree.

Ratan's first posting was in Bihar and the experience must have been a major challenge after a college lifestyle in the US. In all Ratan would spend years in the Telco and Tisco Jamshedpur complexes…

From steel making, he would later plunge into Bombay's textile industry where he rubbed shoulders with aristocratic mill-owners such as Nusli Wadia and upcoming ones like Dhirubhai Ambani. The move was a logical transition as Naval was involved in the group's mills, but for Ratan the experience was traumatic. " I was given two sick companies supposedly to train me. First Nelco and then I had also to take over the ailing Central India Textiles." Ratan said. " Central India was turned around, its accumulated losses were wiped out and it paid dividends for several years. Then came the recession in the textile industry and Tata Sons decided not to support the company financially. It was taken into voluntary liquidation."

The winding up of the group's textile interests didn't dent Tata's reputation as badly as did Nelco's trouble history. " My first directorship was that of Nelco and the status of that company has forever been held against me, " he says. " But people forget it is a Rs 200bn company today."

The radio and television manufacturer might shine in comparison with R P Goenka's troubled Murphy but flickers dully before the tremendous success of newcomers like Venugopal Dhoot's Videocon or Gulu Mirchnadani's Onida. According to Tata, this view represents only one side of the picture. " It's unfair. No one wanted to see that Nelco did become profitable, that it went from a 2 percent market share to a 25 per cent market share. Those issues have been forgotten."…..

Soon after Ratan's appointment, the subject of Nelco's heavy losses came up at a Tata Sons meeting. The criticism naturally upset Ratan. He had nothing to do with the past performance of the company and he was being penalized for it. " Jeh came to my rescue, " Ratan recalled, " and slowly turned round the whole conversation. If you are confident, he will question you and grill you, but if you are fighting with your back to the wall, he will come and duel beside you."

It was in Nelco that JRD perhaps saw Ratan's determination and supported his plans for the company's growth against the views of many other seniors within the group. When he was put in charge of Nelco in 1971, sales were Rs30m, by 1992 they rose to Rs 2bn with a pre-tax profit of Rs 13.5m, and in 1995, sales were halved to Rs 1.13bn though profits were higher at Rs 32m.

Nelco stiffened Tata's spine. " I learnt a lot. I don't think I could have learnt as much the hard way as I did in Nelco. I'm most grateful to the powers that be that they gave me Nelco and that they made me fight for three years, wondering where my next payroll was coming from, and to (fight) in a very competitive market place. In fact Telco is the first company in which I could actually do something. In other companies, I was always put in a fire-fighting situation."