Indian magnate Ratan Tata dies at 86 – how he made a mark in the UK

Ratan Tata took the helm of the family business in 1991 and transformed it into an international conglomerate worth $365bn. His death plunged India into mourning

Ratan Tata, Chairman of Tata Sons, during the annual Clinton Global Initiative
(Image credit: Brian Harkin/Getty Images)

A few years ago, an elderly man turned up at Taj Hotels’ flagship hotel in Mumbai and asked for a table for two in its buzzing cafe overlooking the Arabian Sea. There were no free tables, so the young hostess asked him to put his name on the waiting list. “Ratan Tata” he wrote, and disappeared before anyone made the connection. They had just turned down the chairman emeritus of Tata Group – the family-controlled conglomerate that had built, and still owns, the hotel. Ever self-effacing, he didn’t take it personally.

The story is typical of Tata, known for his personal humility as much as his lofty corporate ambition, whose death at 86 on 9 October plunged India into mourning, says Al Jazeera. Mumbaikars “turned out in throngs” for the state funeral of a man renowned for walking the streets “with shopping bags from sensibly priced stores” or driving one of his pet projects, the Tata Nano: a tiny car priced under £2,000, which, to his disappointment, didn’t take off. Having taken the helm of the more-than-century-old group in 1991, just as India was shedding its socialist-era protectionist policies, he transformed it into an international conglomerate, worth some $365 billion today, becoming “emblematic of the newly liberalising Indian economy”.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.