From Tetley Tea to Jaguar Land Rover and Air India, Ratan Tata has ticked off almost every item on his bucket list. However, one that remains unfinished is the electric version of his small car, the Tata Nano. A concept entrusted to Coimbatore-based Jayem Automotives (Jayem Auto) is still on the shelves, despite nearly 400 cars being launched, primarily due to Covid-19 and new crash norms.
On the eve of Durga Puja in October 2008, industrialist Ratan Tata announced that Tata Motors would withdraw from the nearly completed Nano car plant in Singur, attributing the decision to Mamata Banerjee's anti-land acquisition movement, which he claimed had derailed what was meant to be a "groundbreaking project" -- the world's cheapest car.
Ratan Tata: A Life, the much awaited biography, reveals that after a year of 'parallel running', Tata began having second thoughts about Cyrus Mistry's 'suitability'. 'Mistry targeted Ratan, the man who had elevated him from virtual oblivion into the mainstream of the Tatas...'
Ratan Tata was one of the world's most influential industrialists yet he never appeared on any list of billionaires. He controlled over 30 companies that operated in over 100 countries across six continents yet lived an unpretentious life. Ratan Naval Tata, who died at a Mumbai hospital on Wednesday night at the age of 86 years, enjoyed a perhaps unique status -- a corporate titan who was considered a 'secular living saint' with a reputation for decency and integrity.
Chief ministers of West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha on Wednesday evening condoled the demise of Tata Group's chairman emeritus and veteran industrialist Ratan Tata, and said his legacy will live on forever.
We asked colleagues, present and past, to reflect on a man who has made such a difference to their lives and careers. Here it is then, a rich collection of memories that offer enchanting glimpses of the enigmatic Ajit Balakrishnan.
There were certainly qualities adhering to the Tata Group, which emanated from the persona of Ratan Tata. Most notable of these would be the low profile he maintained, which sharply contrasted the in-your-face celebrity status, celebration of wealth and pursuit of importance many of liberalised India's rich, love, notes Shyam G Menon.
'I think some of us, like Mukesh Ambani, myself and those of us who head industrial units, ought to really focus on what we can really do to make the world a safer place, maybe 50 or 100 years from now.' 'For instance, how can we deal with climate change and global warming, right now?' 'The effects of it may not be felt now; in fact, we may pay a price for it today, but it will help the generations to follow.'
'What's sad today is that there are so many people who cannot find work, not because the country is devoid of that opportunity, but because we are not doing enough in the country.'
An exclusive excerpt from The Tatas: How A Family Built A Business And A Nation.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launched its third and final developmental flight of Small Satellite Launch Vehicle here on Friday whose payloads can be used in applications like satellite-based surveillance, disaster and environmental monitoring, fire detection, volcanic activity among others.
It was the summer of 2006 (May 18). Writers' Building, then the state secretariat, was buzzing with journalists. The event marked the start of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's second term as chief minister. And in style, it got off with West Bengal bagging the small car plant, Nano.
India on Monday announced the results for the country's first critical mineral auction. Amid the tepid response from big players, the list of successful bidders included some lesser known names. A total of five companies secured bids for six critical mineral blocks of graphite, manganese, phosphorite, lithium, and rare earth elements with auction premiums ranging from 13.05 per cent to 400 per cent.
Addressing an event in New Delhi, Gen Pande also said the recent global developments have underscored that the security of the nation can neither be outsourced nor be dependent on the largesse of others.
He presented the first-ever National Creators' Awards at the Bharat Mandapam in the national capital.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said the interim Budget presented by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman offers the "guarantee" of strengthening the foundation of a developed India and carries the "confidence of continuity".
Confident of securing a massive majority in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday outlined his vision for his next five-year term saying the Modi 3.0 government will put all its might to strengthen the foundation of 'Viksit Bharat' or a developed nation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday inaugurated Abu Dhabi's first Hindu stone temple amid devotional chants and in the presence of spiritual leaders of the Swaminarayan sect.
The government will formulate a strategy to make India self-reliant in edible oils by boosting domestic output of oilseeds and launch a comprehensive programme to support dairy farmers, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on Thursday. India imports a large quantity of edible oils to meet the domestic demand. During the 2022-23 marketing year (November-October), the country imported nearly 165 lakh tonnes of cooking oils, valuing a whopping Rs 1.38 lakh crore.
Modi launched a scathing attack on the Congress alleging that the opposition party has become outdated and has always been against any kind of reservation.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai says Gemini will eventually be integrated into Google's search engine, its ad products, the Chrome browser.
India's High Commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma reiterated New Delhi's stand on the diplomatic standoff with Canada, and urged Ottawa to release evidence backing up its allegation regarding the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
In a major victory for Tatas, an arbitral tribunal has awarded Tata Motors a compensation of over Rs 766 crore for the losses incurred because of protests by Trinamool Congress that stalled its small car project at Singur in West Bengal. The tribunal asked the West Bengal government to pay Tata Motors the compensation, along with interest, according to a stock exchange filing by the Mumbai-based auto major on Monday. The company stated that the arbitral tribunal has asked the West Bengal Industrial Development Corp (WBIDC) to pay the company Rs 766 crore compensation, in connection with losses incurred on its manufacturing site in Singur.
The launch is scheduled at 11.46 am on November 26, said the national space agency headquartered in Bengaluru.
How scrap material became a magnificent Rudra Veena... How children learnt about animals, the real way... How the BRO is strengthening India...
Sources in the military establishment also said the present global scenario "necessitates a flexible and adaptive approach" to tackle defence and national security challenges.
At a time when climate change poses significant challenges and the need for sustainable and efficient farming practices has never been more critical, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) allow farmers to gain a bird's-eye view of their crops from ground level. Drones have become a new force in precision agriculture, helping increase productivity while prioritising sustainability and resilience. Fertiliser major IFFCO is exploring this very transformative power of technology in agriculture.
No! It's not walking the red carpet, dining at the city's finest spots or their collective, undivided love for Manish Malhotra :).
Readers have responded resoundingly to our invitation to congratulate the ISRO team for Chandrayaan-3's successful Moon landing.
If Cyrus's protestations of having no knowledge of his imminent dismissal are to be taken at face value, he was extraordinarily naive and insulated from the ground reality. There were enough straws in the wind to suggest that his relations with Ratan were fast deteriorating to a point of no return.
Gautam Adani's alleged proximity to Narendra Modi may dent the latter's self-styled image of incorruptibility, points out Kanika Datta.
This year's edition, three years lost to the pandemic and scheduling, wore a distinctive shade of green, and, as would befit an era of technology shift from internal combustion engines to electric motors, had a clutch of high-technology exhibits and concepts. But the excitement of the expo's heyday was missing.
ISRO's first mission in 2023 and SSLV's sequel saw a strange coincidence--it was launched at 9.18 am, the same time its predecessor lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here on August 7, 2022 but could not deliver due to orbit anomaly and flight path deviation.
That means a manufacturer looking at a market like India needs to decide whether small, cheap cars or small, expensive cars or both will work better for them, says Pavan Lall.
The SSLV is designed to be affordable and amenable to industry production and aimed to function as a launch-on-demand platform for mini, micro or nano satellites.
The mission objective is to ensure data continuity of ocean color and wind vector data to sustain the operational applications.
Thackeray accused the Eknath Shinde-led government of being ideologically bankrupt.
Skyroot Aerospace has become the first private company in India to give wings to the Indian space programme, after the sector was opened to private players by the Centre in 2020.
Backstage at New York Fashion Week was the most electric, hair-raising address to be at this September.
Old ideas contained in the heads of old economists still dominate. That's not good, asserts T C A Srinivasa Raghavan.
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