Ratan Tata, the philanthropist and former chairman of Tata Group who has died aged 86, played an instrumental role in globalising and modernising one of India’s oldest business houses. His ability to take bold, audacious business risks informed a high-profile acquisition strategy that kept the salt-to-steel conglomerate founded 155 years ago by his forefathers relevant after India liberalised its economy in the 1990s. At the turn of the millennium, Tata executed the biggest cross-border acquisition in Indian corporate history - buying Tetley Tea, the world’s second largest producer of teabags.
The iconic British brand was three times the size of the small Tata group company that had bought it. In subsequent years, his ambitions grew only bigger, as his group swallowed up major British industrial giants like the steelmaker Corus and the luxury car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover. While the acquisitions didn’t always pay off - Corus was bought at very expensive valuations just before the global financial crisis of 2007, and remained a drag on Tata Steel’s performance for years - they were big power moves.
They also had a great symbolic effect, says Mircea Raianu, historian and author of Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism. He adds that they “represented 'the empire striking back' as a business from a former colony took over the motherland's prize assets, reversing the sneering attitude with which British industrialists looked upon the Tata Group a.