Top 18 Tata Quotes & Sayings

Let us look at international institutions and trusts. Trusts have a certain roles and unless you define what their roles are, what is it that they control? Are they controlling the day-to-day operations? If you do that, then what is Tata Sons for? What are the operative companies for? Effectively, you need to have clarity on the roles of different players inside a structure. That is the governance framework.

You may know that in India now the Tata car is becoming all the rage; you can buy it for one lakh - $2000 dollars - it's very, very cheap. So India seems to be going the route that China went a few years ago and that developing countries all over the world seem to want to follow, namely, to rely on these personal vehicles, which is just an irrational way of organizing transport.

How important is failure - yes, failure - to the health of a thriving, innovative business? So important that Ratan Tata, chairman of India's largest corporation, gives an annual award to the employee who comes up with the best idea that failed.

Perhaps the loneliest time was during the Tata Tea issue in Assam. For some reason, everyone believed that we had conspired with the extremists, ULFA. People still believe what they read is necessarily the truth. Sometimes it is based on inadequate or wrong information.

I do not know how history will judge me, but let me say that I've spent a lot of time and energy trying to transform the Tatas from a patriarchal concern to an institutional enterprise. It would, therefore, be a mark of failure on my part if it were perceived that Ratan Tata epitomises the Group's success. What I have done is establish growth mechanisms, play down individuals and play up the team that has made the companies what they are. I, for one, am not the kind who loves dwelling on the 'I'. If history remembers me at all, I hope it will be for this transformation.

I found my student of the year, and now Tata Nano is searching for India's student of the year

I'm pretty relaxed with my skincare. I really like two brands: Tata Harper and Ren, which is a natural skincare line. I use lotions, and I use Dove soap.

I use Tata Harper Illuminating Eye Cream to depuff my eyes.

I think the Tata Group's greatest contribution to the growth of the Indian economy and Indian industry probably happened in the pre-independence era. The Group's investments in industries such as steel, textiles, power and hotels were certainly driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, but they were driven even more, I think, by a desire to make India self-sufficient and independent of its colonial masters then.

I followed someone who had very large shoes. He had very large shoes. Mr. J. R. D. Tata. He was a legend in the Indian business community. He had been at the helm of the Tata organization for 50 years. You were almost starting to think he was going to be there forever.

The cost to Tata of purchasing Land Rover and Jaguar may have been small, but its wider symbolic significance is enormous.

The wealth gathered by Jamsetji Tata and his sons in half a century of industrial pioneering formed but a minute fraction of the amount by which they enriched the nation. The whole of that wealth is held in trust for the people and used exclusively for their benefit. The cycle is thus complete; what came from the people has gone back to the people many times over.

India is not going to come up with the best and most modern car, but if you want the most economic car in the world, we're pioneering that with the Nano, which the Tata Group did in India, for example. And I would call that innovation of the highest degree.

The first stock I bought was Tata Tea, the first stock where I made big money was also Tata Tea.

Happy". I had not heard that word since Mr. Milgrom spoke it at the last Hanukkah. I asked him the question that had been on my mind since then. "Tata, what is happy?" He looked at me and at the ceiling and back to me. "Did you ever taste an orange?" he said.

Just as the Japanese pioneered a new form of manufacturing - lean production and quite new standards of reliability - so Tata, too, is embracing new forms of manufacture in order to revolutionise the price to meet the consumer needs of a poor, developing country.

The early Rockefellers made their wealth from being in certain businesses and remained personally very wealthy. Tata's were different in the sense the future generations were not so wealthy. They were involved in the business but most of the family wealth was put into trust and most of the family did not in fact did not enjoy enormous wealth.

I am quite positive about business in India, and 2014 was a strong year here. We announced deals with Vodafone, Tata, Bharti.