Ratan Tata Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography & More

Ratan Tata Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography & More

Some Lesser Known Facts About Ratan Tata

• Does Ratan Tata smoke?: No [7]

• Does Ratan Tata drink alcohol?: No [8]

• Ratan Tata is a name to reckon with in the annals of Tata Group’s business. Although he is one of the most influential businessmen in India, he is best known for his simplicity and loneliness, and the words used most often to describe Ratan Tata are ‘shy’ and ‘loner.’

• During his 21 years of tenure as the Chairman of Tata Group (1991-2012), revenues grew over 40 times, and profit, over 50 times.

• Ratan Tata, in many ways, is an accidental millionaire. He is, in fact, a gifted interloper, who, even after heading one of the biggest business conglomerates in India, lives an ordinary life and shuns the media spotlight. This quiet and humble Indian business tycoon drives himself to work in a Tata sedan.
  

• Ratan Tata belongs to a family that had everything but children. Traditionally, Parsee priests, the Tata Family got its recognition when Jamsetji Tata opened a textile mill in 1868. Strikingly, it offered workers pension and paid accident compensation, the facilities, which were nowhere in the scene in the Indian business sector.
  

  A Textile Mill opened by Jamsetji Tata in the late 19th century

• Although the Tatas had built up a formidable business by 1971, the family was running out of heirs.

• Ratan’s father, Naval H Tata was born into an ordinary family in Surat. Naval’s parents died when he was too young; leaving him to be raised at an orphanage, but Naval was destined to win life’s lottery and at 13. Naval was adopted by Lady Navajbai Tata (Tata’s formidable matriarch); who had been left childless and widowed at 40. Thereafter, Naval rose to become the deputy chairman of the Tata Group.
  

  Ratan Tata (R) with his father Naval (L) and Half Brother Noel (Centre)

• Ratan is, in fact, a Tata by birth; as his biological maternal grandmother was the sister of Hirabai Tata, wife of group founder Jamsetji Tata. Moreover, his biological grandfather, Hormusji Tata, also belonged to the broader Tata Family.

• Unlike the Ratan Tata’s present-day lifestyle of an ordinary person, he spent his childhood in luxury; as he grew up at Tata Palace, a white Baroque revival-style building in the centre of Mumbai; attended by a crew of 50 servants. Reportedly, Ratan was driven to school in a Rolls-Royce.

• While growing up, Ratan became very close to his grandmother, Lady Navajbai Tata. While talking about his grandmother in an interview, he said,I owe a great deal to my grandmother who brought up my brother and me. She instilled in us what she considered to be proper, And I think that has had a very profound influence on me and my value systems.”
  

  Lady Navajbai Tata

• Ratan Tata’s fascination for America led him there to study architecture at Cornell University. While in the United States, Ratan travelled across the country; washing dishes to make ends meet. [9]
  

  A rare photo of Ratan Tata when he travelled to America in his youth

• In an interview, Ratan admitted falling in love with a young woman in America. Although he said that he had fallen in love as many as four times, the closest one was with that American woman. He said,Well, you know one was probably the most serious was when I was working in the US and the only reason we didn’t get married was that I came back to India and she was to follow me and that was the year of the, if you like, the Indo-Chinese conflict and in true American fashion this conflict in the Himalayas, in the snowy, uninhabited part of the Himalayas was seen in the United States as a major war between India and China and so, she didn’t come and finally got married in the US thereafter.” [10]

• Ratan Tata joined Tata Group in 1961 at the Tata Steel, where he was assigned the responsibility to shovel limestone & handle blast furnace.
  

  Ratan Tata with JRD Tata on the shop floor of TELCO (now, TATA Motors)

• His pragmatic business skills led him to become the Chairman of Tata Group in March 1991; when JRD Tata stepped down as chairman of Tata Sons, naming Ratan his successor.

• Under his stewardship, Tata Group became an international conglomerate, and he got Tata Tea to acquire Tetley, Tata Motors to acquire Jaguar Land Rover, and Tata Steel to acquire Corus.

• Before Nano Car came into the business in 2008, Ratan Tata had already gifted India its first indigenous car- Tata Indica in 1998. In one of his Instagram posts, he wrote about the birth of India’s first indigenous car-Everyone told us it couldn’t be done without having a joint venture or a partnership with an international company. That if I did this, I will be linked to failure. But went ahead anyway. There were technical issues and many lessons we learned. It was a wonderful experience to be breaking new ground. The chances to give up were many. We stayed the course, worked out each issue, and that was the birth of India’s first indigenous car- Tata Indica.”
  

  Ratan Tata at the Launch of Tata Indica

• Before Ratan Tata took the charge of Tata Group, there was no retirement age in Tata. He drafted a retirement policy in the company and fixed retirement age for executive and nonexecutive directors. While talking about this retirement policy in an interview, he said,One may feel that 65 is too young or 70 is too young or that 75 is too young. Whatever it may be, you don’t need a person to say, look, I think you should leave. So that has been very much behind the thinking of setting a retirement age. There was no retirement age in Tata. I could’ve just as well have stayed up and stayed on.”

• Ratan Tata’s mother tongue is Gujarati. [11]

• Ratan Tata is very affectionate towards dogs and has two pet dogs- Maximus and Tito. Since the days of JRD Tata, the Bombay House (the Headquarters of Tata Sons) has a tradition of letting stray dogs in during rain. The Bombay House still has a kennel for stray dogs.
  

  Ratan Tata spending quality time with his pet dogs

• On 23 March 2009, he launched his dream car- Tata Nano, and it was considered as the world’s cheapest car priced at Rs. 1 lakh.
  

• He is a trained pilot and on 8 February 2007, he became the first Indian to fly F-16.

• Although he is a professional architect, he has designed only two houses- his mother’s, and his own beach-house off the Arabian sea.

• When it comes to his closest friends, he gives two names- Amar Bose who made billions from audio equipment, and conductor Zubin Mehta (a fellow Mumbai Parsee) who lives in the United States.

• What makes Ratan Tata outstanding is his social conscience. He prefers fairness over money, and he owns less than 1% of the Tata group.