DH Web Desk
Ratan Naval Tata was born on December 28, 1937, in Bombay, now Mumbai, during the British Raj. His family belonged to the Parsi religion, a small Zoroastrian community that originated in Persia, fled persecution by the Muslim majority there centuries ago and found refuge in India.
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He grew up in a white Baroque revival-style building in Mumbai known as Tata Palace, with a staff of 50 servants, and was driven to school in a Rolls-Royce. In this photo Ratan is seen with his brother Jimmy.
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He was then sent to the United States for high school at the Riverdale Country School in New York City. He graduated from Cornell University with an architecture degree and later took management courses at Harvard University Business School.
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A rare photo of Rata Tata with his friends Rudy and Lou at Riverdale Country School, US in 1955.
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Ratan had plans to pursue architecture and was working in the United States when his grandmother, who raised him, urged him to come back and join the family’s vast business empire.
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He took over the family empire in 1991, riding the wave of the radical free-market reforms India had just unleashed that year.
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Tata's 21 years at its helm saw the salt-to-steel conglomerate expand its global footprint to include British luxury brands such as Jaguar and Land Rover.
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On turning 75 in 2012, Tata surrendered his executive functions in the Tata Group. In what was supposed to be a smooth transition, he appointed as his successor Cyrus Mistry, 44, whose family was the largest individual shareholder in the conglomerate.
Credit: PTI
In October 2016, less than four years after being appointed to head the Tata conglomerate, Mistry was ousted by Tata’s board with the full backing of Ratan Tata. Tata retook his position as chair of the conglomerate until a successor was named by the board in February 2017.
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Tata preferred to stay out of the limelight and projected a public image of a shy loner, a man who never married or had children.
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Tata maintained a subdued social life. He devoted much of his leisure time to driving sports cars, piloting planes and racing his speedboat out of the harbour near an apartment he kept in Mumbai.
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