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Rare photos reveal start of Ratan Tata's journey

Last updated on: December 28, 2012 13:11 IST
JRD with Ratan Tata after handing over the reins.

As Ratan Tata, who has lead the Tata group for more than 20 years, steps down from chairmanship, we take a snapshot of his illustrious life through the lens of photographer Gopal Shetty.

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Rare photos reveal start of Ratan Tata's journey

Last updated on: December 28, 2012 13:11 IST
Ratan Tata with JRD. Ratan Tata is the adoptive great-grandson of Tata group founder Jamshedji Tata.

Ratan Tata is the adoptive great-grandson of Tata group founder Jamshedji Tata. His father, Naval Tata, had been adopted from the family of a distant relative by Jamshedji's childless younger son, also named Ratan Tata, and his wife Navajbai.

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Rare photos reveal start of Ratan Tata's journey

Last updated on: December 28, 2012 13:11 IST
Ratan Tata's parents separated in the mid-1940s.

Tata's parents (Naval and his first wife Sooni) separated in the mid-1940s, when Ratan was seven and his younger brother Jimmy was five years old.

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Rare photos reveal start of Ratan Tata

Last updated on: December 28, 2012 13:11 IST
Ratan Tata with the then-Singapore prime minister at Tata showroom in Worli, Mumbai.

The current Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was the deputy prime minister during the visit to Tata showroom in Mumbai in early 1990s. Photographer Gopal Shetty was a stringer with Reuters and remembers Loong saying, "India is liberalising at a time when the road is very crowded, while Singapore liberalised when the entire road was empty".

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Rare photos reveal start of Ratan Tata

Last updated on: December 28, 2012 13:11 IST
Ratan Tata with the then-Singapore prime minister at Tata showroom in Worli, Mumbai.

Ratan Tata and his brother were raised by their grandmother Lady Navajbai. Many years later, Naval Tata took a second wife, Simone, and fathered another son, Noel Tata.

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Rare photos reveal start of Ratan Tata's journey

Last updated on: December 28, 2012 13:11 IST
Ratan Tata.

Ratan Tata began his schooling in Mumbai at Campion School, then Shimla's Bishop Cotton School and finished at Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai.

He completed BS in architecture with structural engineering from Cornell University in 1962, and the Advanced Management Program from Harvard Business School in 1975.