Chairman, Tata Sons
Also known as: India's 'most eligible bachelor', even at 75.
Theatre of Operations: IT, Communications, Engineering, Materials, Chemicals, Services, Consumer Products, Energy - all with global footprints
Started his career with: Tata Steel, on the shop floor
Favorite Allies: His German Shepherds
Famous Quote: "I don't believe in taking right decisions. I take decisions and then make them right"
Thorn in his side: His connection with the 2G spectrum scam
If he weren't leading a $71 billion conglomerate, he'd be: Flying planes
Family: Brother Jimmy, half-brother Noel and three half-sisters
Latest project: Pouring $15 million into a project researching water as fuel
Exit Strategy: Cyrus Pallonji Mistry will take charge from December 2012
Ratan Naval Tata, KBE (born 28 December 1937), is an Indian businessman who became chairman of the Tata Group (1991–2012), a Mumbai-based conglomerate. He is a member of a prominent Tata family of Indian industrialists and philanthropists.
Early life
Tata is the adoptive great-grandson of Tata group founder Jamshedji Tata. His father, Naval Tata, had been adopted from the family of a distant relative by Jamshedji's childless younger son, also named Ratan Tata, and his wife Navajbai. Tata's parents (Naval and his first wife Sooni) separated in the mid-1940s, when Ratan was seven and his younger brother Jimmy was five years old. Both he and his brother were raised by their grandmother Lady Navajbai. Many years later, Naval Tata took a second wife, Simone, and fathered another son, Noel Tata.
Tata began his schooling in Bombay at Campion School, Bishop Cotton School, Shimla and finished at Cathedral and John Connon School. He completed his B.S. in architecture with structural engineering from Cornell University in 1962, and the Advanced Management Program from Harvard Business School in 1975. He is a member