JRD Tata handed over the reins of Tata Group to Ratan Tata in March 1991. Ratan Tata, who passed away on October 9, once revealed their chat about the takeover. The company grew bigger and bigger under his leadership. However, did you know how JRD Tata asked Ratan Tata to take over the responsibility of Tata Group? Appearing on Rendezvous with Simi Garewal, Ratan Tata revealed that JRD Tata decided to hand him the company’s duties after he was hospitalised with a heart condition.
“We were in Jamshedpur together for a function and I had to go to Stuttgart for some negotiations. When I came back, I heard he had a heart problem and he was in Breach Candy Hospital. He was there a week and I’d see him every day. He was out on a Friday and the following Monday, I went to see him in the office,” Ratan Tata revealed.
“He would always start meeting by asking, ‘Well, what’s new?’ And I said, ‘J I’d been seeing you every day, there is nothing new since I saw you last.’ He said, ‘Well, I have something that’s new that I want to tell you. Sit down. What has happened to me in Jamshedpur has made me think that I need to step down and I have decided that you should take my place.’ (After a few days), he took to it to the board,” he recalled.
Speaking of the board meeting in which the announcement was made that Ratan Tata would be the new chairman, the businessman recalled that JRD Tata revisited all the years he had put in into the business. “I have heard many of my colleagues say that there was history that day because apart from the fact that he was stepping down from a position that he had held for 40 to 50 years, there was a lot of emotion attached to his giving up this position in favour of someone. But the history and emotion that everyone talks about is not that move. He reminisced through years at that meeting and I can’t reproduce it emotionally or otherwise but that meeting went on like an archival recount of all his days in Tata. Never his own praise but his experiences as he went through. There was history that day, we all came out very moved,” he said.
Two years after JRD Tata handed him the responsibility of the company, he passed away in Geneva, Switzerland.
Over the years, people have been confused about JRD Tata and Ratan Tata’s relationship. However, that was never the case. Their paths crossed when Ratan began working in Jamshedpur. They grew closer over their love for flying and similar ideas about the future. Ratan Tata stepped down from the Tata Group in 2012 when he turned 75.
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