Ratan Tata keen on ventures that will make a difference

Ventures that make a difference to society, provide a service to the common man, enterprises that empower women, enhance access to the Internet — these are the kind of businesses that Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Trusts, says he is interested in.

Interacting with media persons, after addressing the convocation of the Great Lakes Institute of Management here on Wednesday, Tata who has invested in a number of e-commerce ventures, said he would consider businesses that are focussed on bringing in change.

Among the sectors he is interested in are health and technology “which will change India in the years to come.”

While declining to attribute a number to the size of investments, “its my money,” he said with a smile to a journalist who wanted to know how much he had invested. Tata said he did not want to comment on valuations of e-commerce companies, adding “it’s a new area for me.” But valuations are high and “I have some concern that it should plateau or peak too soon,” he said.

Interacting with the graduating students at GLIM, Tata said the start-up environment in India reminded him of the US of the 1970s, when the ability of the young to think out-of-the-box had helped “evolve US from smokestack companies to what we see today” such as Apple and Facebook.

E-commerce and e-retail will change Indian merchandising and marketing. He has spread his investment over 10 such companies hoping some of them will succeed, he said.

In his previous role as Chairman of Tata Sons, he was “deadly afraid of personal investments because of possible conflict of interest” especially since the Tata Group was widely diversified.

To a question on lessons learnt from designing and developing the Tata Nano, he said it had been an exhilarating experience to create an affordable car that could be purchased for ₹1 lakh.

But unfortunately, the company had not been able to deal with an “aggressive head of government”, and the company lost one year as it had to shift the plant from its original location in West Bengal.

During that time, excitement around the product dropped and its competitors got the space to circulate myths. The soft approach of marketing it as a cheap car rather than an affordable car made for negative sentiment, he said.

He exhorted graduates to “be driven by desire to make a difference” in an ethical and fair manner. Being popular or conformist will not help. Right decisions will have to be executed, however difficult. “Decision making is a lonely activity” but it should stand up to public scrutiny, he said.

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