Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00On to somebody who has worked professionally with Mr. Ratan Tata in the past, a large leader in his own right, Mr. Anil Kumar Sardana, MD of Adani Energy Business is with us as well.
00:12Mr. Sardana, good having you, thanks so much for joining in. Good afternoon, Neeraj here.
00:16You have personal experiences, professional experiences with Mr. Ratan Tata, so sincere condolences to you for what has happened.
00:25What is your reaction to the kind of loss that this means for corporate India and for the nation?
00:32Thank you, Neeraj. As the nation mourns the departure of a patriarch, I guess there will be no parallel to Mr. Tata.
00:47I was personally very blessed to have worked directly with him as my immediate superior.
00:54So for me, it's a void which will take a long time to fill in, especially because he was a mentor, a great guide.
01:06And above all, the values that one could directly learn from his own candor and conduct is something that is very rare to get that across one's mind.
01:21And how would you not have a person amidst you with those values?
01:28So while physically we may have lost, but I guess his legacy is very well etched in everyone's mind.
01:34Usover has worked with him and particularly for many of us who have had the opportunity of working directly with him for many, many years.
01:43We will continue to manifest his learning teachings through our actions.
01:52So I would say it's a huge void which only time will heal. May his soul rest in peace. May his family have the fortitude to bear this loss.
02:05But for all of us, it means that we don't have the presence of the mentor.
02:12And one would hope that we will continue to take his teachings forward through our actions.
02:21So right. It's a loss that we will mourn and probably only time can heal.
02:25And this is such a human reality for all of us, right?
02:30But we have with us Ravi Kanth, former vice chairman and MD of Tata Motors as well joining us.
02:35Mr. Kanth, hi, it's Amina joining in. We have lost one of the most precious titans of our time.
02:42The legendary Tata sir has passed away and the nation has pretty much come to a halt.
02:48You worked with him extremely closely, both professionally and personally.
02:53What were your key learnings from Tata sir?
02:57What does he leave behind for you on a personal and professional front in more ways than one?
03:03You know, first and foremost is Mr. Tata taught us how to think big.
03:14And I think that's a great quality that he imbued in the group itself.
03:21Where to see an opportunity when none existed.
03:26To go after something very, very big and which is not constrained by the current situation at any point in time.
03:38So that is something which I think the group saw and delivered on.
03:45And in Tata Motors, I was fortunate to have been there to kind of help him translate that dream into reality.
03:55When I joined the group, when I joined Tata Motors, our turnover was $1.6 billion.
04:02And when I left 15 years later, it was $39 billion.
04:06Now this is a very big jump or very large size by any standard, even by world standards.
04:14And how did it happen?
04:16It happened only because of Mr. Tata's foresight that he will not accept the constraints of present times.
04:27But we look at something very big and bold.
04:30He did that.
04:31Along with that, he had a very soft quality, very humane touch.
04:36He always supported his people.
04:40He always had trust in his people.
04:43And therefore, people felt, I would say, encouraged to go after these big risks and big steps and convert them into reality, I think.
04:56So creating trust amongst people is something which is very unique in Mr. Tata.
05:02And the combination of these two things, thinking big and having trust, really was a magic formula which he applied in any organization, especially Tata Motors, with which he had a special fondness.
05:19This is the only company where he was an accepted chairman for a long time.
05:49Every large corporate leader who has come in has spoken about his humility, his philanthropic activities, etc.
05:54I would love to understand a point that Mr. Kant mentioned, the vision of the gentleman.
05:59And we were talking about this in the morning.
06:01After setting the domestic turf straight to take global wings and make a global footprint as well,
06:08what are some of your key memories as you would have been a part of so many numerous journeys when the Tata Group went global under the stewardship of Mr. Tata?
06:19So what you heard from Mr. Ravi Kant is what that individual was.
06:29And besides all those abilities, the personality that he was, he would be able to lift veil and demystify several tough issues, be it technology-related matters, be it matters related to geopolitics, be it issues related to man management, be it issues related to several government policies.
06:58The simplicity that he embodied in thinking and with the integrity of thought and purpose that he exhibited, that was the rarest aspect that you would relate to him.
07:14And he would therefore come across very clearly and cleanly for any and every issue that he will discuss with you.
07:22I recall my days in telecom, recall my days in the energy side, and the way he would engage on technology, which is benchmarked across the globe.
07:34For a person of his stature, of his pedigree, one does not expect that he would be such an avid reader, that he would have gone through details meticulously and be able to guide you on those aspects.
07:49So that is something very rare to find, that a person with so much of humility, with large vision, will also be able to get down to micro level and be abreast of what's happening globally.
08:06So some of those attributes that we all saw and saw him practicing gave us the trust that we are being guided in a manner that we will be able to take it to a logical point.
08:19And you heard some of those examples in terms of how one could multiply and how one could deal with many of those domestic and global matters and multiply it in the manner that the group could eventually achieve scale and heights, which everyone today knows about.
08:40Right. I want to refer to a statement made by Ratan Tata to Humans of Bombay in 2020.
08:46And I want to talk about this because I think that he was known as the father of Indico and Nano cars.
08:53And he says, I remember seeing a family of four on a motorbike in the heavy Mumbai rain.
08:58I knew I wanted to do more for these families who were risking their lives with the lack of an alternative.
09:03By the time we launched the Nano, our costs were higher, but I'd made a promise and we delivered on that promise.
09:08Looking back, I'm still proud of the car and the decision to go ahead with it.
09:12This is what Ratan Tata told Humans of Bombay.
09:15And he said Nano was meant for our people.
09:18Mr. Kant, you, I believe, if I'm not wrong, worked closely with Tata during the innovation and, of course, bringing Nano to the streets of Mumbai.
09:29It was quite the journey, a different kind of legacy left behind.
09:32While the Nano doesn't exist anymore.
09:35It, of course, brought to light and continues to inspire engineers, innovators and entrepreneurs, not just in India, but all over the world.
09:44Would you agree? Would you think that's the kind of impact he had on the people of this country?
09:50And that will continue to live on even though the car, you know, eventually doesn't exist?
09:55I think it was one of the finest pieces of innovation in the car industry ever.
10:03To say that we want a car like this, there were two changes which happened because the car came seven years after we made the statement in Geneva.
10:14One was that the commodity prices are shot through the roof.
10:20And the other was that the car, which was conceived earlier, had modified itself into a very, very real car, making all the safety norms and other prevalent norms in the country.
10:35And, of course, as you know, it was a very real car.
10:38Even a person like Mr. Tata puts it very comfortably.
10:43So on two axis, the cost went up and therefore it was a well-lined possible task.
10:52But I think the engineers, Tata Motors, did an absolutely fantastic job because it was a white sheet of paper exercise.
11:02Where we started working backwards from if the selling price is one lakh rupees, then what should be the bill of materials?
11:10What should be the components? And then how that can be done through design and through innovation and all that.
11:17And a group of people within Tata Motors and our vendors, I must confess that vendors played a big role in that and our suppliers made a big role in it.
11:29And then finally they made it happen. That car was available seven years later at a price of one lakh rupees.
11:36I think it's a huge, huge thing as to how innovation can be done.
11:41And I'm very, very proud of the team at Tata Motors.
11:46And, of course, Mr. Tata played a very key role in making all this happen.
11:54Sardana, one last question for you and this is a little bit beyond business and knowing Tata so professionally.
12:01Please share with us one fond memory that will be with you forever of Ratan Tata.
12:07We've got a collection of some very human moments of Ratan Tata that we are trying to collate.
12:12So it would be nice for us to hear from you one moment that you remember very fondly when you look back at your days with him.
12:19I mean, there are many moments because on one side he was, I would say, a bold thinker.
12:28On the other side, he was very trusting of people.
12:33And there are small, small moments I think each person would have seen in their lives that which touched them.
12:42And even if there is a worker and he's talking to him, he would listen very intently to that person and his voice and find a solution to it.
12:54So I would say his life was always full of these incidences day after day, whether it was the CEO of the company or whether it was a worker of the company.
13:05And as you know, ultimately, his love for animals and especially dogs.
13:11Mrs. Sardana, that question for you as well, one fond memory that will last with you forever of Tata Sir.
13:18We've got a collection of very human moments of the man himself, and we'd love to hear from you.
13:25Like Mr. Kant said, it's very difficult to put everything in terms of saying that this is the topmost memory that one has.
13:36Every day's interaction, every day's discipline that you will see in the person clearly showed that there was not one,
13:44but several such moments of engagement that one would clearly recall having worked closely with him.
13:53You know, you sort of hear attributes from people outside and one has seen those as every moment being lived across in our engagement.
14:06So, you know, typically when we dealt with foreign companies, we dealt with foreign dignitaries.
14:14The way he will come across, the way he will put his humility and simplicity.
14:21You will always be surprised down to the fact that, you know, what he is inside, what he is outside.
14:29So there were several such attributes that one would see every day.
14:34And I think one of the key aspects that in the recent times people have seen is that when the arrangement with Docomo landed up to a problem,
14:44he spearheaded saying that I have made promise to Docomo as part of the agreement that we will return their money if the government is not able to give a spectrum.
14:56And, you know, see the commitment he could have easily taken guise of the Indian government policy that we are not able to give money.
15:05But he went right up to the doors of the court and got that because he had made a commitment.
15:13His words were like a gospel truth and he would stand by and do everything possible to honor those.
15:19So those are some of these aspects and there are scores of them that one remembers having dealt with him day in day out.
15:29Got it. I have one final question to both of you really.
15:33Because a lot of conversation around succession at the Tata Group.
15:40Are there challenges to it? Any thoughts that you can share Mr. Sardana? Let me start with you.
15:45I don't want to. I guess the group is large enough and stable enough that they would have no issues at all.
15:57As far as the business is concerned, it's well started with Mr. Chandra.
16:03And as far as the trusts are concerned, I am sure there is succession already delineated and planned.
16:09You would have heard in the last few months there were groups created to steer in the event that there were any such challenge.
16:20And I guess for a group as stable as Tata's, those things shouldn't be a worry at all.
16:26You would echo Mr. Sardana's thoughts. Anything that you would like to add before we wrap up?
16:31Yeah, actually I left the group a decade ago and therefore I play no part in these things.
16:39And therefore I leave it to the best judgment of people who are in charge.
16:44Thank you Mr. Kant and Mr. Sardana for taking the time out to talk to us.
16:51And of course condolences to you on the loss of a big, big sort of Ratan of our country.