“In a free enterprise, the community is not just another stakeholder in business,” according to J.N. Tata, “but is, in fact, the very purpose of its existence.” Raised in Tamil Nadu in the south of India, Chandra is the first non-Paris to head Tata. He earned a postgraduate degree in computer applications and joined TCS as an intern. He is a dedicated marathon runner. As chairman, he presides over a complex corporate culture that combines past- and future-oriented, rural and urban, and outward- and inward-facing qualities. In the year and a half that he has been at the helm of Tata Sons, Chandra has pursued a “One Tata” strategy using the synergies across Tata Egypt Email Address companies to increase efficiency and applying the same standard of financial discipline to all the Tata companies some of which had faltered and grown bureaucratic.
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In July 2018, Tata’s Mumbai headquarters, known as Bombay House, reopened following a year of major modernizing renovations. That week, Chandra sat down with strategy business in his Mumbai office. We asked him first about his priorities for Tata, and then about the two futures in which the company will play a pivotal role: that of India in particular, and that of the global economy in general. Throughout the history of the Tata companies, we have built businesses whenever we saw the need. When our founder, or any of our earlier leaders, started a textile or gulf email list steel company, or an automaker or a hotel, I don’t think they sat and created a spreadsheet. India needed a steel mill, a bank, an insurance company, or an airline and the leaders created one.
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Pretty much the first companies in India in all these industries were started by Tata family members. Once the need was there, they figured out a way to run the companies profitably. We are still balancing these two imperatives. On the one hand, the business need is important to resolve. On the other, we need the financial discipline to run a good, solid balance sheet. That applies to all the Tata companies, regardless of how they have been performing. Are the financials different for Tata companies that compete primarily within India versus companies that compete globally. In some businesses you go for growth rates, seeking cash flow in an expanding market. In other businesses you look at the demand that already exists. We have metrics in either case. We just have to make sure that we have the discipline to follow them.
