Key words: India, Parsis, Tata Group, Tata Motors, Tata Nano, JLR

M. S. KALANDAROVA, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences

In India, it is difficult to imagine the sphere of life without the Tata brand. Millions of Indians work in Tata factories, factories and companies, young people and children study at universities and schools created by Tata, drive Tata cars, regularly use Tata goods and services, and guests of India stay in Tata hotels.

Jamshedji Nasserwanji Tata (1839-1904) was one of the founders of Indian industry. He founded the company Tata & Sons (later-Tata Group), built in the XIX century in the east of India the city of Jamshedpur (Jharkhand), which the Indians call Tatanagar. Each new generation of the Tata clan contributes to the prosperity of the company. Ratan Tata, Jamshedji's great-grandson, served as president of the Tata Group conglomerate for two decades and was instrumental in shaping the modern image of India's economy.

"Today we are a group with an annual revenue of $ 100 billion. Over the past 20 years, our revenues have grown 20-fold, with 58% coming from operations abroad. Our brand is ranked 45th in the world and 1st in India. Our products and businesses are represented in 45 countries. We have a reason to be proud and feel a sense of confidence when facing the challenges ahead" [1].

Ratan Tata, President of the Indian company Tata Group, addressed the employees on the day of his 75th birthday, December 28, 2012, leaving the post due to reaching the age limit for members of the Board of Directors.

The company has changed its age limit rules for senior management three times. In 2002, when R. Tata turned 65, the company quickly moved him to the position of non-executive Chairman of the Board of Directors, which allowed Ratan to retain his post for another five years. Three years later, the company finally approved the age limit of 75 years.

The adoption of such a law is a sign of recognition of Ratan Tat's merits not only by the Board of Directors, but also by the company's shareholders, who stated:: "We cannot lose our ratan" ("ratan" means "precious stone"in Sanskrit).

REPRESENTATIVE OF THE TATA CLAN

Ratan Nawal Tata is the fifth president of Tata Group, a representative of the Parsi community [2], and the great-grandson of the corporation's founder Jamshedji Nasserwanji Tata, whose ancestors were clerics in Navsari (Gujarat). He was born on December 28, 1937 in Bombay (Mumbai) to one of the richest families in India. His father, Nawal Khormusji Tata, was a member of the company's Board of Directors, and his mother was an Indian from the wealthy Sunu Commission family. Navalus divorced her in mid-1940 and married a Frenchwoman, Simone Dunoy (b. 1930).

Ratan and his brother were raised by Nawajbai's grandmother, whom the boys adored. He graduated from Bombay High School and then Cornell University in the United States with a Bachelor's degree in Architecture and Structural Engineering in 1962. He probably could have stayed to live and work in America (he had an offer from IBM), but to the son of a Board member and nephew of Jehangir R. D. Tata (1904 - 1993), then president of the Tata Group, not working in a family business.

It was not ethical to do business, so the young specialist started his career at Tata Steel in Jamshedpur.

His first major appointment was as a director at NELCO (National Radio). & Electronics). The company was in a difficult situation. He managed to correct the situation. However," no one wanted to admit that the company had become profitable and its share in the consumer market had grown from 2% to 25%, " Ratan later recalled [3]. The next destination is the fading Empress Mills factory. For the reanimation of the enterprise, 5 million rubles were required. Rs. Unable to find financial support, the factory was forced to close in 1981.

For a decade, Ratan was plagued by bad luck. The attacks became more acrimonious when J. R. D. Tata stepped down as president of Tata Industries in 1981 and handed over the reins to Ratan. Recalling that period, he said: "For a very long time I stood still, but in the end, life turned to me" [3].

BUSINESS COMBINATIONS, PURCHASES, MERGERS

Ratan Tata's name is associated with the unification of all Tata companies and companies under a single brand. Before he came to power, companies operated independently of each other, sometimes perceiving other groups as their competitors. The leaders of these groups positioned themselves as appanage princes who ruled feudal possessions, often openly ignoring the decisions of their superiors. In 1983, R. Tata developed a strategic plan, the main goal of which was to regain control of the group's companies, as well as the development of new markets and products, thoughtful mergers and purchases, and the use of group synergy.

In 1991, Ratan was appointed President of Tata Sons by the Board of Directors. Its first step was to introduce an age limit for CEOs. This allowed him to part with the long-serving directors and establish control over numerous companies of the group. The procedure was accompanied by resignations, scandals, for example, with Russi Modi (Tata Steel), Darbai Seth (Tata Chemicals), Ajit Kerkar (Indian Hotels). Especially loud and acrimonious was the scandal associated with the dismissal of Russi Modi in 1993, which became public, which went against the Parsi ethics of doing business [4]. There was a joke in the company: the replacement of two letters turned Russi Mody into Rude-I-Mody ("rude" from English means ignorant, ill-mannered). But Ratan's position was still precarious.

In 1997, it was rumored that Shapurji Pallonji Mistry, a tycoon of Parsi-Irish descent, would oust Ratan and take over the group. He is the sole shareholder, whose share in Tata Sons was 17.5%, while the Tata clan's share was only 1.5%. This situation caused moral damage to the company and formally deprived Tata of the right to manage the group. The situation was extremely difficult, but Ratan made an effective decision. A number of financial transactions were conducted to equalize the stakes of all companies (up to 26%), and this allowed blocking decisions at the official level.

R. Tata pays a lot of attention to the company's brand. By 1998, the company had a single logo and brand that belonged to Tata Sons, and an important document was developed - the Tata Code of Conduct (Tata Code of Conduct). Each company was required to sign it. According to this document, in case of violation of the company's group interests, Tata Sons sells its share of the company. These

tough but effective management steps were taken in a timely manner, because today the Tata brand is a guarantee of success and quality, recognition in the international market.

R. Tata has always believed that global market superiority means more than just competing revenues and market shares. He is gradually starting to buy up European and Asian companies. Combining them with his own, he brought new enterprises to the world economic market, but already under the Indian brand. Here are some examples.

In 1995, R. Tata first drew attention to the well-known tea company Tetley. But the proposed amount for the deal ($318 million) did not suit the owners of the company. Tata backed down, but continued to observe her activities.

In February 2000, Tata bought the company for $430 million. and it has become the third major player in the world of branded tea.

In June 2006, Tata Group bought the coffee company Eight O'clock for $220 million.

In May 2010, the company Tata tea Ltd, combining the old companies Tata Tea, Tetley, Eight O'clock, etc., was renamed Tata Global Beverages Ltd and took 2nd place in the world market of similar products [5].

In the mid-1990s and early 2000s, Tata Tea made two attempts to enter the Russian market with its Tetley brand. However, it did not manage to win more than 1% of the market at that time.

In 2009, Tata Group with the participation of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Russian TD Grand created a joint venture SuntyCo. In 2012, Tata Global Beverages (Tata GB) bought 49% of SuntyCo from its partner - the founder of the Grand tea and coffee trading house Alexander Borisov.

Colin Burns, CEO of Tata GB in Russia, confirmed the purchase of 49% of SuntyCo, noting that the transaction was made with the participation of the EBRD, which together with Tata GB owned 51% of the joint venture. Tata GB and the EBRD will now own 65% and 35% of SuntyCo, respectively. The parties do not disclose the transaction amount. "Russia is still the most important market for us. A market in which we plan to build a much broader base through acquisitions and organic growth," said Colin Burns. [6]

In 2005, the Indian magazine The Week asked a question to R. Tate, whether Tata Power will try to buy General Motors. To which the head of the company replied: "Why not?". Two years later, in January 2007, the world's attention was focused on Tata Group, which bought the largest Anglo-Danish steel company Corns, many times the size of Tata Steel, for $12.1 billion.

What did India gain from buying Corns? According to Western economic observers, the Indians have taken the biggest slice of the pie from the steel market: the country, which ranked 56th in the world in steel production before this purchase, moved to 5th [7].

Reviews of the purchase were mostly positive, although some of them sounded notes of anxiety and doubt. For example, in an editorial in The Times of India, the authors, on the one hand, admired that the Indians, ahead of the Brazilians, stormed the world, on the other - they believed that the deal was overvalued. But even expressing these very human emotions, the newspaper objectively noted that the deal was a turning point, it confirmed the phenomenon of India as a major player in the global game.

Equally important is Ratan Tata's assessment of the importance of Corns for India: "... it would take years of hard work to build a company of this scale. This was the last available page.-

tagged purchase. The first step is to prove that India can operate outside of its own country in the international market and justify itself as a global player. If you want to be a global company, you must abandon the concept of "one nation" and behave as a loyal global company, operating in global markets, conducting operations in different geographies" [8].

THREE STEPS TOWARDS THE INTERNATIONAL CAR MARKET

The Indian car market is relatively small, but fast-growing. R. Tata, a proponent of globalization, sought to turn Tata Motors into an international player in the car market. To this end, he took three important steps.

Step one-creating the first national passenger car. According to the concept of Ra-tan, the car was supposed to have the technical characteristics of popular cars in India: the size of the Maruti Zen, the design of the Ambassador, the price of the Maru-ti-800 ($3.5 thousand). And such a firstborn was Indica. In 1995, when the idea of creating a car was announced, Tata's entourage openly condemned it for exorbitant production costs ($17 billion). rupees = $284 million), although, according to preliminary calculations, this amount was significantly lower. Ratan, recalling the difficult times for him, said: "Even among the Tata, there were people who dissuaded me from this project, and when the idea failed, the accusations against me did not stop... People have distanced themselves from me. " [8]

Indica's path to market has been bumpy. After selling the first batch of cars in the domestic market, the company began to receive complaints about serious breakdowns that threatened people's lives. In 2008, a new second-generation model, the Indica Vista, produced by the English company MG Rover, rolled off the assembly line and demonstrated the progress made by Tata Motors over the past few years in the production of passenger cars. The model surpassed its predecessors in terms of design, technology and quality. Today, the Indica Vista occupies its niche in the global passenger car market, and Ratan has begun to implement the second step.

He dreamed of transferring impoverished Indians from bicycles and mopeds to a small, inexpensive car and announced the creation of a "people's car" worth $2.5 thousand. With the light hand of Indian journalists, the car was dubbed a hatchback, "a car for one lakh" (1 lakh = 100 thousand rupees). Initially, the car was designed for the domestic market. The affordable price caused a stir among the population. However, already in November 2010, demand for cars decreased by 85%.

There were many reasons for the sharp decline in demand, but one of the main reasons was the forced relocation of a rebuilt car factory from West Bengal to Sandan (Gujarat) in 2008.Another reason was cases of spontaneous ignition of the car while driving. And finally, the price of the car.

Modernization of the car, called Tata Nano, led to an increase in prices by 15-20%, it is no longer available to the poor. Tata Nano was in a neutral price zone: too expensive for the poor, but not expensive enough for more affluent buyers, which also affected the demand for microliters.

In October 2012, in one of his interviews, R. Tata said that in three years Tata Nano will be exported to the United States. The company is working on a new design for both the US and Europe. In the United States, the Tata Nano will cost three times as much as in India - $10 thousand, but even at this price, it will be the cheapest car on the American market [9]. According to the data published by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, in April 2011 Tata Motors exported 498 units to Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Africa [10].

The third step to the international car market was made in 2008, when Tata Motors announced the purchase of two "icons" of the British car industry-Jaguar and Land Rover (hereinafter - JLR) from Ford. This purchase allowed Tata Motors to enter the luxury segment of the automotive industry, which is dominated by two competing companies - Mercedes Bern and Lexus. No less important is the fact that Tata Motors acquired both brands for a record low price of $2.3 billion. At one time, Ford acquired Jaguar for $2.5 billion, and Land Rover - $2.8 billion [11].

Was this transaction timely? In 2008, banks and markets in Europe and America experienced a deep economic crisis. To solve its own financial problems, Ford, for example, sold its brands by combining them. Although Tata Motors planned to buy only Land Rover, the company did not make any concessions. The sharp decline in demand for SUVs caused a huge damage to Tata Motors -$510 million in the first 10 months alone.

The company is now under the burden of finding emergency solutions to the crisis. In August 2009, Tata Motors was able to collect

$288 million in private funds and the European Investment Bank. The situation gradually began to improve. In the first quarter of the 2009/2010 financial year, the damage was still quite high and amounted to $119 million, but in the next quarter it decreased to $43 million. Revenue in subsequent quarters totaled $75 million, and this schedule has steadily increased. In 2010 - 2011, JLR's sales revenue was $2 million.

India's rescued JLRS continue to gain momentum. Today, SUVs account for 75% of all Tata Motors ' profits. "This deal brought us to the international stage, and we ourselves believed that we were no longer an exclusively Indian company," Ratan said in an interview [12].

* * *

Ratan Tata is a public figure, but even those very close to him know little about the personal life of the patriarch of Indian business. For more than 40 years, he has been working for the benefit and prosperity of his empire, but he did not become a billionaire. His clan owns only 1-1.5% of the shares. However, Forbes magazine ranked him 61st on its list of the world's richest people in 2010 and named him "the best Indian brand ambassador".

Ratan is a bachelor who lives in Mumbai in a mansion with a sea view. His biggest passion is airplanes and cars.

He inherited his love of flying machines from his predecessor, his uncle Jehangir Tata, who founded Tata Airlines in 1932. The company was nationalized by the Government of independent India in the 1950s and renamed Air India. An attempt to return the aviation business to the holding after difficult negotiations with the government that lasted seven years was unsuccessful. According to Ratan, "the realities of the business vision in India, bribery and nepotism are to blame for everything."

Ratan is licensed to operate utility jet aircraft. He made his first solo flight at the age of 17. R. Tata often flies in helicopters. "I like the engineering of helicopters and their management - not a simple, but interesting activity," Ratan said [3]. In 2007, he took part in an air show. Ratan likes to swim and play golf. In his youth, he regularly went scuba diving.

In an interview with the Mint business newspaper, Ratan shared his plans after retirement. He intends to deal with the problems of agricultural development, water conservation and baby food production. "My main goal is to do something about the nutrition of India's children and pregnant women, because it will change the mentality and physical health of our population in the coming years," he said [13].

According to the national service "Family Health", 46% (31 million) of children with signs of hunger in 2005. In 1999, this figure was 47%.

Ratan, despite his retirement, will continue to interact with Tata Group. Almost 60% of the group's profits are controlled by two charities-Sir Dorabji Trust and Sir Ratan Tata Trust. Ratan leads both.

Dozens of research and educational centers in India are supported by Tata Group funds: Tata Institute of Basic Research, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Tata Memorial Hospital Medical Center, etc.

Foresight, patience and hard work are the ingredients of Ratana Tata success. The young businessman headed the dying companies, which he turned into profitable ones. This was the case with the fragmented NELCO and TELCO companies (now the world-famous Tata Motors company), where it faced outdated industrial production. A similar scenario was observed in TISCO and Indian Hotels.

Tata Group was on the verge of collapse, and only with the arrival of Ratan did it embark on the path of consolidation.

Ratan's achievements in strengthening the group and providing leadership in the Indian industry can serve as a model for a businessman.

1. http://parsikhabar.net/individual s/ratan-tatas-farewell-letter-to-all-tata-employees/4858/

2. For more information, see: Kalandarova M. S. India. Zoroasrians - a vanishing community / / Asia and Africa Today. 2012, N 7. (Kalandarova M.S. Indiya. Zoroastriytsy - ischezayushaya obshina // Aziya i Afrika segodnya, 2013, N 9) (in Russian)

3. http://www.rediff.com/business

4. Kalandarova M. S. Parsy v politicheskoy zhizni Indii (XIX - early XX century) // Vostok/Oriens, 2013, N 2, pp. 40-54. (Kalandarova M. S. Parsy v politicheskoy zhizni Indii (XIX-XX century) // Vostok/Oriens, 2013, N 2) (in Russian)

5. http://cwikipedia.org/wiki/Tata _Global_Beverages

6. http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/ 20002846

7. http://www.intalev.ru/agregator/ finance/id_45288.

8. The Week, February 11, 2007, p. 39.

9. http://www.usatoday.com/story/ driveon/2012/10/15/tata-nano-ratan/ 1633903/

10. http://www.rediff.com/business /slide-show/slide-show-1-auto-the-past-present-and-futurew-of-tata-nano/ 20110615.htm

11. http://www.avtomanual.com/ne ws/4-ford-prodal-jaguar+land-rover-za-23.html

12. http://money.cnn.com/2011/04 /15/news.international/tata_auto_empir eindica

13. http://www.livemint.com

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