Tata group launched its passenger car Tata Indica in year 1998. The group was led by Ratan Tata and it was his decision to enter in the passenger car business. Tata Indica was a failure in its first year and the experiment seemed to be failing. Many people started advising Ratan Tata that he should sell the passenger car business. Ratan Tata also agreed to this and a proposal was given to Ford, they showed interest too. Ratan Tata, along with his close team members reached Detroit to discuss the same. Detroit hosts Ford headquarter and considered and the automobile hub of United States.
While the meeting went on for 3 hours, it seemed that the behaviour of Ford representatives was insulting toward Tata group representatives. In the meeting, chairman of Ford (Bill Ford) said to Ratan Tata, “why did you enter in the passenger car business when you were not knowing of it. It will be favor if we buy this business from you”.
Ratan Tata decided to move back home. While travelling, he was very tense as the feeling of being insulted was on his mind.
After earlier failures, Tata Motors did well with its business of passenger cars but in the same period, Ford did very bad. In 2008, when Ford was on its way of bankruptcy, Tata Group offered Ford to buy their luxury car brand Jaguar-Land Rover. Bill Ford, along with his team, reached “Bombay House”. “Bombay House” is the headquarter of Tata Group. The deal was finalized for 2.3 billion US $, which amounted to 9300 crore Indian Rupees at that time. Ford was incurring heavy losses from Jaguar – Land Rover division.
In the meeting, Bill Ford said to Ratan Tata, ”You are doing a big favour for us by buying Jaguar- Land Rover”. Jaguar- Land Rover is now owned by Tata Group and is currently making profit.
This incident was first disclosed by Pravin Kadle, who is the head of Tata Capital and was part of the team which had visited Ford headquarter along with Ratan Tata. Pravin Kadle told this story while receiving Y.B.Chavan award on behalf of Ratan Tata in Mumbai on 15thMarch 2015.
“There is one more incident that happened when the 26/11 attacks happened. After few months of 26/11, Taj group of Hotels owned by TATAs launched their biggest tender ever for remodeling all their Hotels.
in India and abroad. Some of the companies who applied for that tender were also Pakistanis. To make their bid stronger, two big industrialists from Pakistan visited Bombay House ( Head office of Tata ) in Mumbai without an appointment to meet up with Ratan Tata since he was not giving them any prior appointment. They were made to sit at the reception of Bombay house and after a few hours a message was conveyed to them that Ratan Tata is busy and can not meet anyone without an appointment.
Frustrated, these two Paki industrialists went to Delhi and thru their High Commission met up with a Minister. Then Congress minister Anand Sharma immediately called up Ratan Tata requesting him to meet up with the two Pakistani Industrialists and consider their tender “enthusiastically “.
Ratan Tata replied…”you could be shameless, I am not” and put the phone down.
Few months later when Pakistani government placed an order of Tata Sumos to be imported into Pakistan, Ratan Tata refused to ship a single vehicle to that country. This is the respect and love for motherland that Ratan Tata has. Something that our current politicians should learn from.
Once a journalist asked Ratan Tata is not so rich as Mukesh Ambani, to which Ratan Tata replied, Ambanis are businessmen and he is an industrialist. A person who worked for TATA shared his experience when he went to Ratan Tata’s house once to repair his television.
Answer was written by Nicholas Staton on Quora.
My brother used to work for Croma as a Store Manager.
Croma Electronic Store is owned by Tata Group.
Ratan Tata was then the Chairman of Tata Group.
Being a Store Manager, he had to personally coordinate with his team when there were any electronics installations in High-Net Clients house.
He had been to many famous celebrities, politicians houses for installations of electronics.
He would later in the day tell me which famous person house he went that day and how was the experience.
Now he gets a message from the Area Manager that an LED TV installation was to be done at Mr. Ratan Tata’s House.
He went to his house which is located in Malabar Hill.
When they rang the bell, Mr. Ratan Tata himself opened the door.
He had a three-legged German Shepard who was present beside him.
He welcomed all three of them and showed the location of the TV. Now, we would expect a multimillionaire/billionaire to live life in a posh way having all luxuries.
Here was Mr. Tata wearing a normal simple Parsi shorts and Vest in his modest home.
The furniture there was old vintage style and the decor he said must’ve been the same for ages.
The biggest shock was, he owned one of the best electronics store chain in India and still had a Sony Box TV, which was around 30 years old minimum.
Now one would guess he must’ve got a 50 or 60 inch latest LED, nope, his choice was a normal 30 inch Sony Bravia LED. My brother said he was one of the most humble persons he ever met.
He is a perfect example of simple living high thinking lifestyle.