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Ratan
Tata, standard bearer of India's business transformation,
receives honorary degree from University of Warwick
July 13, 2005
Ratan
Tata, chairman of the Tata Group and the outstanding Indian
industrialist of his generation, today received an honorary
doctorate from the University of Warwick.
Professor Lord Bhattacharya,
founder and director of the University of Warwick’s
Warwick Manufacturing Group, who has known Mr Tata for
many years, said: “Ratan Tata’s modesty and
lack of ostentation belie his standing as one of the
world’s leading business figures. He is a man of
enormous humanity, a renaissance man. He possesses great
business vision and acumen. He has transformed the Tata
Group and is a standard bearer for Indian business on
the world stage. I am delighted that the University
has chosen to honour him with this Doctorate.”
Ratan Tata’s early passion
was for architecture, receiving a BSc from Cornell University
in Architecture in 1962. He also completed the Advanced
Management Program conducted by Harvard University in
1974-75. Over the past 14 years, he has applied all
his vision, flair and skill to the transformation of
the Tata Group, an icon of Indian industry. In the process,
he has turned “one of India’s most stodgy
conglomerates into a global business player”, said
Forbes Magazine on naming him Asian Businessman of the
Year for 2004.
Managing the Tata Group represents
a huge challenge. The Group has operations in more than
40 countries across six continents, exporting goods
and services to 140 nations, with revenues in last year
of £10 billion and employing some 220,000 people.
As well as being India’s largest company, Tata
is also among the most respected. The Group sets a very
high standard of business ethics and is well known for
its commitment to corporate social responsibility. Indeed
when the terrible tsunami struck in December, Ratan
Tata took personal charge in overseeing the Group’s
relief operations.
Ratan Tata was appointed chairman
of Tata Sons, the apex company of the Tata Group, in
1991. He has streamlined the group, focusing it on a
series of key growth sectors and leading it into new
industries, such as passenger car manufacture and telecommunications
services. During this period, he has at different times
held the chairmanship of major Tata companies including
Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Power, Tata Tea, Tata
Chemicals and Indian Hotels.
He is also chairman of two of
the largest philanthropic undertakings in India. Tata
Group is unique in that nearly two thirds of the equity
of the parent firm, Tata Sons Ltd., is held by philanthropic
trusts endowed by Sir Dorabji Tata and Sir Ratan Tata,
sons of the Tata Group founder Jamsetji Tata, who began
the family business in the 1860s. Through these trusts,
Tata Sons gives away on average between 8 to 14 percent
of its net profit every year.
Ratan Tata is a member of the
central board of the Reserve Bank and of the Prime Minister's
Council on Trade and Industry. In 2000, the government
of India honoured Mr Tata with its supreme award, the
Padma Bhushan. Internationally Ratan Tata is a member
of the international advisory boards of the Mitsubishi
Corporation, the American International Group, and is
also a member of the board of trustees of the Ford Foundation.
He also serves on the International
Investment Council set up by the president of the Republic
of South Africa, the Asia-Pacific advisory committee
to the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange,
the board of governors of the East-West Center, the
advisory board of RAND's Center for Asia Pacific Policy,
and the programme board of the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation's India AIDS initiative.
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