The funeral has taken place in Mumbai of Ratan Tata, the chairman of certainly one of India’s greatest conglomerates, Tata Group, who died on Wednesday aged 86.
Enterprise leaders, politicians and celebrities had been amongst 1000’s of people that paid their final respects on the centre the place his physique lay in state earlier than being cremated.
Maharashtra state declared a day of mourning and his coffin was given a navy salute because it was taken away for the funeral rites.
Ratan Tata took over as group chairman in 1991 and is credited with reworking it into a world powerhouse.
Throughout his 20-year tenure, the conglomerate made a number of high-profile acquisitions, together with the takeover of Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, UK-based automotive manufacturers Jaguar and Land Rover, and Tetley, the world’s second-largest tea firm.
Tata was born in a standard Parsi household in 1937. He studied structure and structural engineering at Cornell College within the US.
In 1962, he joined Tata Industries – the promoter firm of the group – as an assistant and spent six months coaching at an organization plant in Jamshedpur.
From there, he went on to work on the Tata Iron and Metal Firm (now Tata Metal), Tata Consultancy Providers (TCS) and Nationwide Radio and Electronics (Nelco).
In 1991, JRD Tata, who had led the group for over half a century, appointed Ratan Tata as his successor. “He [JRD Tata] was my biggest mentor… he was like a father and a brother to me – and never sufficient has been mentioned about that,” Tata later advised an interviewer.
In 2008, the Indian authorities awarded him the Padma Vibhushan, the nation’s second-highest civilian honour.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed Tata as a “visionary enterprise chief, a compassionate soul and a rare human being”.
