Where did Ratan Tata go to school, and more interesting facts about Ratan Tata's family, life and work

Padma Vibhushan Ratan Naval Tata, 28 December 1937 – 9 October 2024

Ratan Tata died on October 9 after a brief period of hospitalization. His death, around three months shy of his 87th birthday, sparked nearly as many comments about his simple lifestyle as his business achievements. For outside of work, too, Ratan Tata's life (and that of his brother Jimmy, who lives in a 2BHK in Mumbai and reportedly does not have a handphone) and interests captured the public imagination. Where Ratan Tata went to school, the cars and jet he owned, his principles and his lifestyle, all sparked curiosity and inspired many. Here's what the authors of some of the books on the Tata Group and Tata family have unpacked on these subjects:

Ratan Tata's family: Born to Sooni and Naval Tata in December 1937, Ratan Tata was brought up by his paternal grandmother Lady Navajbai after his parents' divorce in the 1940s. Both his parents subsequently remarried. In addition to his brother Jimmy, Ratan Tata had four half-siblings: Noel, Shireen, Deanne and Geeta.

Ratan Tata's education: Ratan Tata went to school at Campion up to 9th standard, and then at the Cathedral and John Connon School. While at Campion, Ratan Tata recalled once in an interview, his grandmother would send a massive Rolls-Royce to drop and pick Ratan and Jimmy up from school. This embarrassed the boys' terribly and Ratan convinced the driver to meet them a short distance from the school. Peter Casey recounts these details in his book 'The Story of Tata: 1868 to 2021'.

For his graduation, Ratan Tata went to Cornell University where he trained as an engineer and architect. Ratan Tata only ever designed two homes: a "beach house off the Arabian Sea" for himself "and his mother's house in Mumbai", Casey writes.

In 1975, Ratan Tata spent 13 weeks studying in the Harvard Business School's (HBS) Advanced Management Program; a period that he called confusing and humiliating because his batchmates seemed very accomplished as well as the "most important" of his life, in a speech at the dedication ceremony of Tata Hall at Harvard Business School.

Ratan Tata reportedly loved fast cars and jets, and owned a Maserati Quattroporte, a Jaguar F-Type S and a Dassault Falcon private jet.

When JRD Tata picked Ratan Tata as the next chairman of the Tata Group, there were some rumblings about nepotism and poor choices. This was 1991, and even though "(Sumant) Moolgaokar had passed away a few years before Ratan Tata became the Chairman of Tata Sons, but others such as Russi Mody, Darbari Seth and Ajit Kerkar (and Nani Palkhivala) were all there, larger than life. Within a few years, all were gone. Several of the senior management staff who had spent years with these satraps became collateral damage", write Bharat Wakhlu, Mukund Rajan and Sonu Bhasin in 'Tata's Leadership Experiment: The Story of the Tata Administrative Service.

Sumant Moolgaonkar was the legendary Telco director who grew the company from manufacturing boilers to selling trucks and other heavy vehicles. Russi Mody led what is now Tata Steel, and Darbari Seth and Ajit Kerkar ran Tata Chemicals and Indian Hotels, respectively, in JRD Tata's time. When Ratan Tata took the reins of the company from JRD, he put more restrictions on the functioning of these maverick leaders.

"Having noted the risks of concentrating power in the hands of a few individuals, Ratan Tata would ensure that no Chief Executive of any Tata company became too powerful during his watch. He introduced fixed terms for the Managing Directors, and he was comfortable bringing in many CEOs from outside the Tata Group. Even the central team at Bombay House saw new faces from outside the Group. TAS officers who had risen to senior roles in the Group did not see significant new opportunities to demonstrate their leadership capabilities, and the debate about the relevance of institutional loyalty continued, inconclusively!" write Wakhlu et al. in their book.

Ratan Tata would have been nearly 73 when Instagram launched in the US on October 6, 2010. His 10-million strong following on the platform is proof that Ratan Tata could connect with people across generations. On Twitter, which launched in 2006, Ratan Tata has even more followers: 13.1 million! And what did he post about? The Tata's business and family history (with photos), charities he cared about, a certain musician picking up a Jaguar XKR, stray animals...

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ratan Tata (@ratantata)

Padma Vibhushan Ratan Tata was 53 when he became chairperson of Tata Group. Taking over from JRD Tata's chairmanship in 1991, Ratan Tata had the unenviable task of steering the group through the early years of economic liberalization. He started by centralizing a lot of the decision-making, and curtailing the powers of the heads of Tata businesses from Tata Steel to Indian Hotels.

During his tenure as chairperson, Ratan Tata also built up Tata Teleservices; took Tata Consultancy Services public; acquired businesses like Tetley Tea, Corus steel and Jaguar Land Rover; and launched the Indica and Nano cars by Tata Motors. In 2012, he handed over the mantle of Tata Group to Cyrus Mistry but remained chairperson of Tata Trusts which owns two-thirds of Tata Sons - the group's holding company. In his later years, Ratan Tata was also known to support animal welfare and invest in around 45 start-ups from Tracxn to FirstCry.

In 2016, when Ratan Tata fired then-Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry, it caused quite a stir. Journalist Coomi Kapoor writes in The Tatas, Freddie Mercury & Other Bawas: An Intimate History Of The Parsis that the dismissal was so sudden that "Cyrus just about had the time to text his wife to tell her that he was about to be fired".

Among the many theories - conspiracy theories and otherwise - Kapoor writes: "the most tantalising question was why Ratan did not simply wait five short months and let Cyrus go quietly in April 2017, when the Tata chairperson’s contract came up for renewal. Instead, the humiliating ouster had sent the firms listed on the stock exchange crashing by some 10 per cent. This was certainly not the Tata way. The company has a tradition of not firing any employee except under the gravest of provocations."

Kapoor does not quite offer an explanation in the book for why things turned out that way, other than to say that Parsis are not always as peaceful and non-litigious as many people think.