Ratan Tata: A Value-driven Leader

When you and I question, ‘Why?’ he would ask ‘Why not?’ That’s exactly how he proved himself by manufacturing the world’s smallest and cheapest car, The Tata Nano, for the Indian market in 2009. He is none other than Ratan Tata, a prominent Indian industrialist and one of the most successful business tycoons in the world who singlehandedly took the Tata Group to global heights. In his own words, “The greatest pleasure I’ve had is trying to do something which everybody says ‘could not be done’.”

On 28 December 1937, Ratan Tata was born into the Tata family, one of the wealthiest business families in Bombay, India. His parents, Naval and Sonoo divorced when he was ten years old, and he was raised by his grandmother. Ratan did his schooling at Campion School, Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai, and also studied at Bishop Cotton School in Shimla. For further studies, he went to New York’s Cornell University in 1962, and later earned a management degree from Harvard University.

On returning from America, Ratan started working as an apprentice at the Tata Steel Division, labouring alongside blue-collar workers, shovelling stones and working with the furnaces.

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