Ratan Tata, Head of $100B Tata & Sons, Retires
thehindu.com
thehindu.com
He reminds me of Ray Anderson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Anderson_%28entrepreneur%29).
They say that nice guys finish last, in a world where a saying like that gets a lot of traction it is great to see a man like Ratan Tata prove that not only can nice guys finish first, they can do so coming from a substantial disadvantage. Imagine, Tata bought out Corus steel (which in turn had bought out Hoogovens Steel), one the worlds largest steel factories.
Buying out a first world competitor is a pretty good move from a 3rd world country.
If you feel like reading some interesting stuff you could do worse than typing 'Ratan Tata' into google and digging in, definitely recommended.
And a lot of the Indian sources are in fact in English.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratan_Tata
Lots of good links there too.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ratan+tata+biography
https://www.google.com/search?q=ratan+tata
https://www.google.com/search?q=tata+steel
The most interesting parts to me are how he managed to leverage his starting position (definitely not at 0) to the point where he made a play for international expansion.
Btw, the article conveniently skips 2G scam that happened in India and how his company got a good price on the spectrum. I am not saying he did wrong stuff...but its not entirely overboard.
However, I agree with you, that he definitely leveraged is starting position and made for international expansion.
Btw, if you have $1B starting money, whether you are in first world or third world doesn't matter...you can buy companies anywhere.
These are starting points, use them to pull up more information, put it back into google, rinse, repeat.
It won't be long and you'll be drowning in critical analysis, such as the time when the farmers whose land was to be vacated for the Nano factories revolted.
I can't do your research and reading for you.
As for the takeover of corus/hoogovens, that was a $13 Billion deal, getting from $1B to the point where you can do a buy-out at that level is a fairly impressive affair, it was the largest international take-over by an Indian company in history.
That alone makes it exceptional and I think you're underestimating the magnitude of that achievement.
Oh, and you don't need to do the @username thing here it's not twitter.
You just called India a 3rd world country ? sigh
A second definition of 3rd world is "developing countries" [2]. India still falls into this definition, but it's rapidly approaching "developed country" status.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World#Third_Worldism
I don't think India is a developed (what does this even mean anymore) country, nor will it be one in the near future. But I think calling one of the largest economies (4th in PPP, 9th in nominal gdp) as third world a bit simplistic..
So basically, India is not even the better one among third world countries.
Infact he spent his last day on the shop floor of Tata Motors rather than at some lavish retirement party (as most CEOs today do)[1]
Massive respect for the man who's led the conglomerate for decades and brought it to the forefront in multiple sectors, and all this while keeping values and morality at the core of his business logic.
Wish him all the very best for all of his future endeavours!
[1] https://twitter.com/RNTata2000/status/284648010657456128
1. He/His family is a very big role model for every aspiring entrepreneur in India.
2. They have a history of over a 150 years of building not just hundreds of billion dollar business but also contributing a lot back to the society.
3. They have built numerous hospitals across India, which often come across as life savers for many middle class/poor people. Especially cancer cure hospitals.
4. They also built one of the premiere science institutes in India. In Bangalore.
5. They more or less built and entire city called Jamshedpur, in the process of setting up their business providing lively hood several thousands of people.
6. They were phenomenal in pioneering the national airline of India.
7. They set up many high ethical standards regarding treating workers well. Infact getting 8 hour work day, health care etc were all their standards now common in government offices in India.
And I can just go on.
Once in generation leaders have been produced by their family. Which are not just changing the face of India but that of the world now.
For those who want to know what contributions they have towards software. They were one of the earliest software services companies in India named Tata consultancy services. To know why that is so important. Together with Infosys and Wipro they defined and shaped the entire software scene in India.
Today youngsters troll on these large Mega corps. But those three companies did much of bulk of Indian software work throughout 80's and 90's. They built bulk of the infrastructure. They built training facilities, trained people and built a lot of confidence that Indians have it in them to compete at the global stage. They even shaped the government policy to a large extent.
Without all that, much of what is possible in Indian IT and pursued with confidence not just in services, but also products couldn't have even been remotely possible.
You could almost say Narayana Murthy, Ratan Tata and Azim Premji could take the all the accolades for building such a bold platform for Indian software engineers to deliver at a global level now.
Eventually, they will want to open up the local markets and reform the bureaucracy, but at a slow enough pace as not to interfere with their quasi-monopoly position. Slow growth or stagnation is producing a net "rent" for the powerful few, while prolonging misery for the rest.
The responsibility to protect the interests of public is with the government which is failing miserably at that task. The people of India too dont seem to value freedom much. For example the anti-corruption movement in India supports a larger government than a thinner one. They too are against reforms but want more and more lokpals to supervise the existing failed structures.
When people are evading their responsibility to fight for their freedom government will have no incentive it giving freedom to people. Corporations never have that kind of obligation in any way. Name one large company in India or elsewhere that has supported reforms that could lead to more competition in their target markets ?
If today as an Indian am able to think about all these great programming work, its because these people did the ground work for guys like me to build upon. Else my generation would have been wasted in doing that ground work.
During my childhood when I was around 5 it was common for my uncles to remark that I may have to go outside India to work as an engineer. If today I can boldly pursue an engineering career in India its because of these people.
Mega corps trolls don't realize this. Heck! Apart from talking, whining, complaining and shitting on great leaders they do nothing. Nothing is stopping you from doing what you think you should be the right.
If a person is not happy with what he is paid, or work offered. He can always work hard, quit and work for a foreign company. Instead of vomiting bile on an industrialist whose work provides employment to millions.
Which country? In India we had a nation wide bandh, strikes and shutdown when our prime minister(Rajiv Gandhi) wanted to introduce computers in late 80's. Because we were afraid computers will eliminate much of desk jobs.
>>...to think one would need an infosys to introduce programming to India...
Contrary to whatever you think, we did need Infosys, Wipro and TCS to get programming in India.
>>...and since when does computer programming have anything to do with providing large scale employment to society.
Since automation sweeped the world. Since using robots for manufacturing became the norm, Since using the internet became critical to communication, services and nearly every other act in the world.
>>Parent is truly delusional.
Sure, great individuals like you must show us the way by doing something.
What exactly is stopping you?
http://profit.ndtv.com/news/cheat-sheet/article-ratan-tata-t...
The baton has been passed on to a new person now, lets see how it goes. Mr.Mistry is like Mr.Cook of Apple, while Mr.RN Tata was like Mr.Steve Jobs of Apple. Well thats the laymans perception of the new head.
1. Delivered Tata Nano, an awesome product built ground up that just works.
2. The way they managed their injured employees, and even those not working for them, after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
Indian Government did not provide any support to the small tea-stall vendors, beggars, railway employees and injured policemen. Ratan Tata did.
That is height of humanity shown by him, despite the urge to excel in business. Amazing stuff.
The settlement for every deceased member ranged from Rs. 36 to 85 lacs [One lakh rupees translates to approx 2200 US $ ] in addition to the following benefits:
a. Full last salary for life for the family and dependents;
b. Complete responsibility of education of children and dependents anywhere in the world.
c. Full Medical facility for the whole family and dependents for rest of their lives.
Employee outreach centers were opened where all help, food, water, sanitation, first aid and counseling was provided. 1600 employees were covered by this facility.
Every employee was assigned to one mentor and it was that person’s responsibility to act as a “single window” clearance for any help that the person required.
Relief and assistance was extended to all those who died at the railway station surroundings, just behind the Taj, including the “Pav- Bha jiâ” vendor and the paan shop owners.
In short, absolutely nothing
In essence, several giant Java systems (+ Oracle usually).
But he surely can sell expensive systems to multibillion dollar companies and charge a lot of money, that's an important quality of his.
Did they contribute anything to free software? Did they contribute to the advancement of software development in any way (articles, libraries, books, etc?) Does Tata has the same level of employee attraction/retention as Google/Fb/Amazon or others?
There is almost no support from the government and people are either mostly lower middle class or poor. So its a little unfair to expect people like Richard Stallman or Larry Wall to have born in India.
It is possible in the US only because because bulk of work in building universities, infrastructure and exposure is already done by your government.
However when given the proper support Indians have always proved to be very hardworking people who go great heights.
Where does this leave us? Companies like these did a lot of work to put Indian developers on the global scene by first fighting a socialist kind of economy, building multi billion dollar businesses, training people and doing a lot of confidence building work for Indians.
May be the next generation you will see some genuine competition from India.
I understand Tata means for a lot of people having a job and a salary, and in India, given the opportunities Tata offers this is very important.
I'm not against people working there, what I'm against is the work model that is used in the majority of projects there. As others have said, some customers pay to have 'warm bodies' in the project.
As you said, maybe next generations will have more and better opportunities in India, let's hope for that and surely Tata and others are a step towards that.
Main problem is that the best developers don't go to TCS or we just don't see them.
But they won't be able to hire anything more than a few tens of people every year.
With several thousands of engineers coming out of colleges every years. Without mass hiring firms like Wipro, Infosys and TCS we are screwed. Its a fact nobody likes to admit.
Its also a myth that these companies don't have good work, I worked for one of them. If you are genuinely passionate, you can do far better work than what is portrayed.
And as I said, without these employers like these we would all be screwed.
Heck, without them doing all the work in the 80's and 90's we wouldn't probably even stand a chance now.
For all the years we had TCS developers working with the team, our developers stayed as developers and improved. Yet with TCS the status symbol there was to be a manager. We had a lot of churn over the years as the more experienced developers became with TCS, they stopped development and moved into a more "prestigious" role as a manager and stopped coding.
That's because just like every where in the world. Power centers and money paid is higher in the managerial levels than technical levels.
However, if you're willing to pay for the quality (or you're a new client that they're trying to impress), you'll see some excellent people working for them.
TCS alone, have 250,000+ employees..
The Tata Group however transcends TCS and TCS is just a very small component of the Tata machinery.
Tata has does a whole lot of social good in India while the govt was busy being corrupt.