In the chronicle of Indian business post-liberalisation, Ratan Tata, who ceases from today to be the public face of a high profile conglomerate, will have earned more than a chapter. He had evolved from one taking small baby steps in cementing his hold on the Group and of companies within, to a man so completely in charge that multi-billion dollar bets in overseas acquisitions by the Group seemed like just another one of those minor chores that are all too common in a day’s work. In a sense, the self assurance and confidence that he came to epitomise in later years was reflective of the élan and sophistication that Indian businesses themselves came to acquire during this period, as they emerged from the shadow of protection into the open world of competing with the best in the world. India Inc too, went through distinctive phases in its evolution --- an initial period of hesitancy and self-doubt giving way to optimism before transforming itself completely into one that is completely at ease with the global order of things.
Under his stewardship the Group has made tremendous progress in relation to anything seen earlier. The decision to take the software business arm of the Group public is also of a piece of strategic wisdom which cannot be encapsulated in mere market capitalisation numbers. It gave the Group an international visage that helped it pit itself against other global majors when it came to aggressively bidding for overseas assets. The value of overseas acquisitions can also be seen in the effortless ease with which the Group has been able to penetrate overseas markets or secure access to valuable raw material abroad that would have been all too difficult as a purely native Indian enterprise. It is a moot point if Tatas could have penetrated the Chinese automobile market as a native Indian enterprise with the same ease with which they were able to do as UK car major that JLR is, even assuming for a moment that Tatas possessed the technical expertise to come up with an ultra luxury car. Similarly the Corus acquisition should not be seen in terms of capturing a slice of the European steel market. Rather, it must be seen as a more durable way of securing access to iron ore and coal resources in Africa that leverages the strategic reach of UK rather than relying entirely on the efficacy of India’s economic diplomacy.
Successful as these initiatives, taken under Ratan Tata’s stewardship, have been, there will be question marks over other facets of his reign. For instance, the success that the Group had achieved in its traditional areas of business had however eluded it in areas outside its core competence. The travails of the Group in telecommunication or the passenger car business are two cases in point. A more charitable view of his legacy would be to see them as the unfinished agenda of the Group that Cyrus Mistry, who now takes over will have to attend to.