A valuable legacy: Ratan Tata built a cohesive, forward-looking group

Ratan Tata's transformative leadership steered the Tata Group through challenges and globalization, reshaping it into a cohesive powerhouse

Ratan Tata presided over India’s largest corporate group for over two decades and left it in better shape than the disparate conglomerate of 34 listed companies and myriad unlisted ones he inherited from J R D Tata in 1991. Though the bulk of the group’s revenues and profits remain reliant, as they did before his appointment as chairman of group holding company Tata Sons, on the Big Three of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Tata Motors, and Tata Steel, Ratan Tata left the sprawling group he inherited on the cusp of economic liberalisation as a cohesive and forward-looking