Ratan Tata: Nothing Nano about him

MUMBAI, INDIA: Running an empire as big as the Tata group, needs more than just wisdom, foresight or courage. It needs the ability to strike the right change at the right time and with the right momentum.

Something that the revered captain Ratan Tata has exemplified since long back.

It's not a small feat to have the group's revenues skyrocket to the tune of over $100.09 billion in 2011-12, but more than that, Ratan Tata would be remembered for how he turned the group around from a conventional empire and some acorns well-inherited from veteran J R D Tata in 1991, to a really global multi-anchored giant today. A big oak that can boast of a super-successful software company as well as the best and the smallest cars in the same breath now.

Today, when a major slice of the group's revenues comes from overseas areas, one can hardly imagine that the group was a fairly organic entity for a long time. It was Ratan Tata who escorted a slew of acquisitions and changed the way the group looked and functioned.

From the Tetley group, a large manufacturer and distributor of tea from the UK in 2000, to the famous Jaguar and Land Rover businesses that it brought in from Ford, under a new brand Jaguar Land Rover in 2008; there a lot of them.

Then in 2005 there were 14 buys followed in 2006, with more eggs in the basket from geographies as far as Germany, Switzerland, UK, Thailand, Czech Republic, USA and South Africa.

A risk taker always, Ratan Tata never shied away from changes that sounded huge at several points. Tetley was a company twice Tata's size.

And no Indian company had ever spent before on an acquisition - $ 12 billion - for Anglo-Dutch steel maker Corus. Ratan Tata bought Britian's Jaguar Landrover for $ 2.3 billion. The intimidating flavour accentuated because most of them were iconic brands with superb assets under their fold, but at times did not make financial sense.

He did not always look outwards, a visionary that he was. In 2002, the group acquired a controlling stake in Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd as well, the first Indian PSU to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

JLR has turned out to be an enviable success story that has reportedly bolstered the Tata Motors balance sheet. The M&A achievements that he struck have taken the balance sheets of the group to new directions and mixes.

When he acquired Jaguar Land Rover from Ford Motors for $ 2.5 billion, he saw access to the lucrative luxury car market in Europe, US and China that now accounts for more revenue than its domestic passenger vehicle sales.

TCS, an IT bellwether is another example how a commodity business can etch cutting-edge, futuristic differentiators when the right leadership steers it.Government of India has honoured this Tata with its second-highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2008. The cusp where all his achievements were to resonate even further.

Impossible to possible is what Ratan Tata proved when he introduced the first 'made by India' car - the Indica but more strongly when 11 years later he whipped up the people's car - the Rs one lakh Nano.

He kick started a new path for the heavy-vehicle maker with Tata Indica, the conglomerate's first passenger car, that soon went on to become the Number one brand in its segment within two years.

Nano was a big feather that donned his cap many years later.

Ratan Tata, was a man of utter grits but also entertainingly enough a man who could even spin some mistakes in the right manner.

So much so to make them archetypes for future. As he spilled some beans during the launch interview, Nano, aptly nick-named as ‘People's car', was never meant to be a Rs one lakh car; and that happened by circumstance.

"I was interviewed by the British newspaper Financial Times at the Geneva Motor Show and I talked about this future product as an affordable car. I was asked how much it would cost and I said about Rs one lakh. The next day the Financial Times had a headline to the effect that the Tatas are to produce an Rs100, 000 car. My immediate reaction was to issue a rebuttal, to clarify that that was not exactly what I had said. Then I thought, I did say it would be around that figure, so why don't we just take that as a target. When I came back our people were aghast, but we had our goal." He had shared.

The first Nano rolled out from a factory in Pantnagar in Uttarakhand in 2009, and as output from Sanand plant began about a year later in June 2010, the impossible sounding ‘notion of an affordable car for India came out of the garage.

Recently, as upbeat, as the first time, he said the world's cheapest car, Tata Nano, is being 'refreshed' to realise its full potential.

Nano only became the masterpiece of a string of changes he struck with great poise.

As we ring in a new year and a new captain, even in 2012, Tata Global Beverages and Starbucks formed a joint venture, Tata Starbucks Ltd, and opened their first store in Mumbai, brewing new changes in the Indian firmaments.

No doubt then that one hears these lines from another veteran himself as quoted in a media report. Ratan Tata is leaving behind "lessons enough for ages" after leading the Tata group for over two decades, as Infosys cofounder N R Narayana Murthy very rightly said.