On Wednesday, Network18 announced it had the “biggest interview of the decade” slated for 9pm. Unfortunately, what we got instead was Ratan Tata, the former Chairman of Tata Sons, and interviewer Suhel Seth. Seth, known for his coiffure, is also the managing partner of Counselage, a brand marketing consultancy firm whose clients include Tata Steel, Tata Power, Taj Group of Hotels and Tata Elxsi.
We’re not sure what happened to the ‘biggest interview of the decade’ but clearly this PR exercise was a last minute substitution for something actually worth our 50 minutes.
It might be unfair to take Seth to task for not asking hard-hitting questions to a man who was a part of the biggest corporate spat of 2016, since he does sign his paycheques after all. But it is baffling that there was no mention of the Cyrus Mistry-Ratan Tata boardroom battle. Did we imagine it?
In the interests of sparing you, we’ve managed to curtail this ‘spectacle’ to 10 of the most interesting (debatable) questions.
1. Ratan Tata Trust will be completing 125 years of its existence. The first of the trusts. When you look back at the work Tata Trust has done, what do you feel and what ignites this feeling of compassion and giving back? – What is this question even?
2. What do you think went through the minds of the founders, when they set this up especially transferring their value in Tata Sons to the Trust? – I suppose ‘keep our wealth safe’ would be too obvious an answer?
3. The one thing that a lot of people talk about is the Tata culture, the Tata way of life. When you’re working for Tata, it’s almost as if you’re working for a family, on the other, it’s almost as if you’re part of a legacy. How have successive leaders managed to retain the Tata culture in times which are sadly materialistic, competitive, how have you maintained that culture?
4. Has it been tough to stick by these values, especially during the times when values were being compromised for politics or competition. Were there times you often felt that “thank god, we’re not the short-cut Tatas”? – What are these values? And the short-cut Tatas are 100 per cent, a show on Colors that we would watch!
5. What was it like growing up (in Mumbai) and I know the personal trauma you went through on 26/11. What went through your mind that evening? I remember you rushed to the Taj to see what was happening. What went through your mind? And it must’ve broken your heart to a great extent… – What a whiplash of emotions, tell us about your childhood and quickly switch to when your hotel was attacked by terrorists. While an important question, it is important to note, people died in this horrific attack, the damage done to a hotel in comparison seems…tawdry, in our humble opinion.
6. You’ve seen Prime Ministers, you’ve seen governments at work, at the state level, at the international level. India is at an exciting time, at an exciting place. What are your views about Narendra Modi? – Wait, were we not bemoaning the zeitgeist for being materialistic and competitive and lacking in values? Now it’s exciting? The times, they are a changing, clearly.
7. I don’t think you’ll ever be free, in a sense, I’m sure Chandra (Chairman of Tata Sons) comes to you, seeks your advice. He too needs a mentor. You’ve done so much, from flying planes to running conglomerates to sitting on international boards, what’s the one thing that continues to drive you to this day? – At this point, Seth seems to be reading out Tata’s LinkedIn profile.
8. Now that you’re at arm’s length from operations at the Tata Group, what excites you the most about the Group and what worries you the most, if anything worries you at all? – What started out as a straightforward question seemed to turn ominous by its end, who is free from worry in these exciting/trying times?
9. So that’s the trust, what excites you about the house of Tata, the industrial bit and what worries you the most if anything? – Wasn’t this just asked?
10. You still have multifarious hobbies from tinkering and driving cars to flying planes to reading to architecture. Do you think in some way, this cross-functionality shaped you? – Tinkering is now a hobby? Also, this is Ratan Tata, the man at the helm of a $100 billion conglomerate, surely, we can find more questions than what he does when he’s bored?
There were a few more questions about his hobbies, and his achievements. What should have been a fascinating insight into one of the most powerful people in the country unfolded like a shaadi.com profile instead.
Ratan Tata, Zenia Tata: Unleashing India’s innovators
How are you feeling about stepping down as chairman? Im feeling very good. Im looking forward to having time to do the things I want to do. And as far as Im concerned, its a relief.
What do you think will be the biggest challenge for your successor? The big-picture challenge is that the [business] environment is going to be tougher and more complex than it was in 1991. In 1991, there were less people aspiring to succeed in this newly opened economy. Today there are many….
ML: What sort of things, for example? RT: The things I just talked about. For instance, if somebody said: why can’t you have broad banding of licensing? Why should you be allowed to produce only trucks of over seven tonnes? If you have a licence for typewriters and technology becomes available for electric typewriters and electronic typewriters, why did you have to go and get a new licence each time? Why couldn’t you have a licence for typewriters and include whatever typewriter technology was available? You were heard. It is these kinds of changes that started then and were tremendously invigorating. I remember that Nelco had a licence to manufacture 2,000 calculators; and if you produced 2,010 calculators, you could be prosecuted. These were the kinds of issues that confounded one. You cannot set up operations for 2,000 units. We were hit by calculators smuggled from Taiwan where they could make 10,000 pieces a month. Those were the changes that were extremely exciting, but it sort of petered out after the first 18 months. I was fortunate enough to have had an opportunity to exchange views with Rajiv and be a part of the small group of people he called from time to time to seek opinions on some of these areas. Around that time, he made me the chairman of Air India. Like so many things that happened in the government, I was never asked (laughs heartily). Rahul (Rahul Bajaj) was made chairman of Indian Airlines. At least I was in India, but Rahul was overseas. We weren’t even told that we were going to be made chairmen; it was simply announced that we had been made the chairmen of Air India and Indian Airlines, respectively. For three years, I was in Air India. They were fairly unhappy years because during that time there was a lot of politicising of Air India which we won’t go into. The Rajan Jetley era and so on were sort of troublesome times and there were divergent views. I wanted to resign, but Rajiv refused to let that happen. So the day he lost power, I quit. I think I gained the ire of V.P. Singh who came into power and who may have thought that it was a reflection on his leadership, but it was not; it was only an issue of getting away from the political swings of Air India. Then things get a bit hazy in my mind, during that time…
ML: The Tatas are now at the forefront of international expansion, mainly through aggressive acquisitions. Is this something that happened because you think opportunities in India are not significant or had you always planned on looking for growth outside? What was the origin of this move?RT: It is part of my plan. You know, I have this annual meeting of communicating with the group and this has been the message over the past three years. I am delighted that the group has reacted to that. Where it started was … I forget the years — I think it was in 1999 when Telco had its big loss. If you look at my chairman’s statement for two to three years, I had kept saying that the kind of growth we have been seeing cannot continue; we will probably see some downturn, but it did not happen. And then it suddenly happened. When it did, it was quite bad. The market shrank by about 40%. We had 60% share of the market; so what do you do? You can’t close down the plant, retrench people, or do any of those things that your counterparts would do abroad. So we just sat there and bled. We didn’t lose market share … we still had a 65% market share of a shrunk market. But we had capacity that was underutilised. We had nowhere to turn. That led me to believe that we must not focus on just one economy; we must be able to spread ourselves to multiple economies where this may be done, but that may be difficult. And that led me to say that we cannot be an India-centric group; we must, in fact, start to look very seriously, not just at exports, but at building capacities in serious businesses in other countries. So that was the genesis.
ML: And now you are moving down into the Rs one lakh car; do you still think that the big market is at that end?RT: Well, even when we entered the car business I always felt that about 60% of the market would be at the low end which, indeed, it is. In fact it’s the exact percentage that I had thought. And it’s an arbitrary low end because what I said at that time was that it was below Rs four lakh. So the question is: what is low? You have got the bottom end of that range; the challenge is whether you can change that bottom end and hit a broader base. Conventional wisdom says no; then you set yourself a task and ask: why not? And suppose you really make an attempt to do that, then you start with a clean sheet of paper and you start looking at all materials and see what you can do to reduce costs. You use adhesive instead of welding; you look at pigmenting instead of painting; and you look at a whole host of issues like that and wonder why we can’t get a car at that kind of price. If you have a bright team of young people who share that same kind of quest, you realise, yes, you can. The first thought we had was that of a car that will have no doors, or curtains instead of windows – not a bad thought. The genesis of that was: Why should four people endanger their lives by riding a scooter on slippery roads, a child in front and the mother holding a baby at the back? Can there be a better form of transport for them? And can it be at an affordable price? It wasn’t a bad solution — it would have four wheels, seats and a curtain, so the passengers would be protected against rain. It won’t be a car but a four-wheeled transport. That’s how it started. Then, as we went along, it became clear that the consumer will not accept a glorified auto-rickshaw, but is willing to buy a car. So the doors got added on, the wind-up windows got added, and we finally ended with a car. Very easy to let the Rs one lakh kind of drift up; but we kept it at the same level. What we would like to offer is a Rs one lakh car and then an up-market version of it which we hope more people will get and may even have things like air-conditioning; but it would still be a very economic car. The only person who has taken our effort seriously is Mr Carlos Ghosn (CEO of both Renault and Nissan worldwide) who has recognised that it seems to be happening and that there is virtue in looking at developing a low-cost car in India. But everybody, including Mr Suzuki, said that it is not possible; and that makes it exciting because then it’s even more challenging.
ML: Can you tell us a little about your childhood and where you were born? RT: I was born in Mumbai, I can’t remember when (laughs). I grew up in Tata House, which is now the head office of Deutsche Bank; it was the house that my grandfather built but never lived to see it completed. My grandmother lived there and my father lived with her; so I grew up in that house. I went to school in Mumbai; most of my schooling was in Campion School, but the last three years were at Cathedral School because Campion ran out of classes. I joined Campion when it had started and each year it added a class; finally they didn’t have the money to continue for a while and a whole host of us had to go somewhere else. So people like, let’s say Bipin Mehta, who was in Campion went to St. Mary’s; his brother Zubin, who was in my class, but a year older, or for that matter Yusuf Hamied of Cipla, also went to St. Mary’s School. Some of us, like Ashok Birla and others, came to Cathedral School. So the last three years, I was in Cathedral School and did my Senior Cambridge from there and went overseas.
ML: Then there was the face-off with the V.P. Singh government when J.R.D. Tata wrote a strong letter to V.P. Singh about allegations of foreign exchange violations over Tata Zug. RT: Yes, there was that also. Bhure Lal (former director of enforcement, foreign exchange) was heading an investigation. I don’t believe we did anything wrong and also everything was disclosed — it was an issue of whether the child of a parent or the grand child of the parent company also needed to have the Reserve Bank’s approval/permission to register or not. The issue never really came to be proven because they couldn’t find anything that we hadn’t disclosed. I think that issue revolved more around Indian Hotels rather than the Tatas because Indian Hotels had a lot of foreign operations at that time. Anyway, after that things become hazy in my mind until 1991.
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4. Has it been tough to stick by these values, especially during the times when values were being compromised for politics or competition. Were there times you often felt that “thank god, we’re not the short-cut Tatas”? – What are these values? And the short-cut Tatas are 100 per cent, a show on Colors that we would watch!
We’re not sure what happened to the ‘biggest interview of the decade’ but clearly this PR exercise was a last minute substitution for something actually worth our 50 minutes.
8. Now that you’re at arm’s length from operations at the Tata Group, what excites you the most about the Group and what worries you the most, if anything worries you at all? – What started out as a straightforward question seemed to turn ominous by its end, who is free from worry in these exciting/trying times?
3. The one thing that a lot of people talk about is the Tata culture, the Tata way of life. When you’re working for Tata, it’s almost as if you’re working for a family, on the other, it’s almost as if you’re part of a legacy. How have successive leaders managed to retain the Tata culture in times which are sadly materialistic, competitive, how have you maintained that culture?
There were a few more questions about his hobbies, and his achievements. What should have been a fascinating insight into one of the most powerful people in the country unfolded like a shaadi.com profile instead.
FAQ
What question should I ask to Ratan Tata?
- How are you feeling about stepping down as chairman? …
- What do you think will be the biggest challenge for your successor? …
- More than half your revenue comes from outside India. …
- Is corruption eroding investors’ confidence in India?
What are the qualities of Ratan Tata?
