The Tatas

You fly into Mumbai in Air India (started by the visionary Late J R D Tata) and check into the Taj group of hotels. You have a good sleep with the room temperature maintained by Voltas air conditioners. Electricity is supplied by Tata Power. You wake up to an alarm set on your Titan watch. You drink Tata Tea/Tata coffee in the morning and feast on a breakfast prepared in Tata salt.You hire a cab for the day, say Tata Indica. You decide on shopping and enter Westside. To please your wife/girl friend you move into Tanishq, need not worry about your bills, you are carrying your Tata Credit Card.You keep in touch with her on services provided by Tata Indicom. You get back to your room and catch up with some news/movies/soaps on Tata Sky. Log on to the net, services provided by Tata Indicom/VSNL. Post dinner you read a book published by Tata McGraw Hill. Also to include Tata Steel, which supplies the steel for the aircraft you flew in, the car you travelled, the buildings you moved into etc.What more, your life is insured by Tata AIG Life Insurance.

Some facts: 96 operating companies in seven business sectors, revenues (in 2005-06) of $21.9 billion, the equivalent of about 2.8 per cent of the country’s GDP, a market capitalisation of $51.3 billion, employee strength of 202,712 odd,shareholder base of over  2 million, operations in more than 54 countries across six continents, and its companies export products and services to 120 nations.

I salute the four Tata titans: Jamsetji Tata, JRD Tata, Naval Tata and Ratan Tata. The Corporate Group that I look upto for their products & services, governance, business ethics, social responsibilites, employee care and vision. Would someday like to see them as the leader in every sector they are involved in and also be a part of the extended Tata family.

P.S: I could not include TCS

I confess to being excessively intolerant of slipshod work and irritatingly insistent on pursuing excellence even in tasks which hardly demand it – J R D Tata