Above all, his love for cars made him famous. Now the Indian businessman Ratan Tata has died. Whether an industrial mogul or a business uncle on Instagram – India recognizes him as a visionary.
Air India, Jaguar or Land Rover – these are big names with which the Indian industrial mogul Ratan Tata and the Tata corporate empire are associated. So it's no wonder that even India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi now praised the late industrialist as a “visionary business leader”.
Entrepreneur Tata was particularly enthusiastic about the automobile industry, as he himself described it at an event in Detroit in 2015: “In the entire time that I have been working in business, nothing has come close to the excitement and elation that that the auto industry can offer me.”
Tata's visions
Tata's group made a name for itself internationally, for example, with its purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover in 2008. But the entrepreneur Tata was also interested in advancing the Indian car industry itself. He described one of his visions, the so-called Indica, in his speech in Detroit in 2015:
I decided that India can produce its own car. All my international friends from the automotive industry say that this is not possible, that we have to cooperate to get know-how and technology. But we produced this car. We called it Indica and produced it in India, with Indian ingredients.
“The bigger it is, the better”
But Tata wasn't nearly as successful with another visionary idea – the so-called Nano. A very small and very cheap car, it should be affordable for many Indians.
Some were quite fascinated by the idea, like Nano owner Dhiraj Singh at the time: “We feel better since we bought a car. We are proud that we also have a car,” he says. “People used to think, 'Well, he comes on a two-wheeler.' But now that's no longer the case. My neighbors and relatives also say I've done something good.”
Nevertheless, the small car was nowhere near as popular with the Indian population as hoped and did not sell well. Motown magazine's Punnoose Tharyan summed up the problem with Tata's Nano in 2012: “In India, of course, the bigger the car, the better it is. People respect you more for the big cars you have,” said Tharyan. “So a Nano is always seen as a car for the poor. Nobody wants to get caught with it.”
Mediation of dogs
With his visions, Tata will probably go down in Indian industrial history. According to its own information, the company of the late 86-year-old is now active in more than 100 countries – from the automotive industry to the steel and IT sectors.
And even the younger Indian generation knew how to take Tata with them. In 2019 he joined the social media platform Instagram and quickly became a sensation there, as a popular “business uncle” with today 10.6 million followers. His recipe for success: photos of children and young people from the past and, again and again, rehoming lost dogs. His last post was shortly before his death. It said there was no reason to worry about him.
