During the 70s, he was given the charge of companies like Nelco and Empress Mills. His journey began just as any other worker in the Tata group. The year 1991 was a turning point in the personal life of Ratan Tata. In the year of 1991, J.R.D Tata retired from the chairmanship of the company Tata Sons and took the name of Ratan Tata to be his successor to the throne.
When things were settled down, he started facing hardships from many company heads. It created a wave of apprehensions among people about his ability to lead the group of companies.
He faced many vicissitudes during his journey, but eventually he succeeded in improving the financial success of the industries and expanded the growth of the organization under his leadership. He transformed the management and vision of the division, and managed to bring in significantly larger dividends. He also setup an age of retirement and began replacing them. He asked all the employees to contribute something or the other to build the group of Tatas and take it to a different level. He continued successfully for 21 years by being the chairman of Tata Group. During this period, the company revenue grew several times, and earned a profit of more than 50 times.
As the Chairman of Tata Group, he was able to achieve international recognition and prestige for his company. The astounding financial success of the company brought the Tata Group to the New York Stock Exchange and under his supervision the corporation became a global brand by acquiring umpteen companies including Tetley, Jaguar Land Rover, and Corus.
In 2003, the idea of the world’s cheapest car was conceived by Ratan Tata on a rainy day after he saw a family of four on a bike. He set out on his quest for an affordable car using the resources of Tata Motors. Tata Nano was a failure because it was marketed as the worlds ‘cheapest car’, cost of mere 1,00,000 rupees. The major reason for it to fail is because people generally mull upon a car as a status and no one aspires to own the cheapest car in the world.
“To spark innovation, the prize is intended to communicate how important trying and failing can be. Failure is a gold mine for a company,” he says.
It was in 2011 when he decided to reward the best failed idea. Ratan Tata started an annual contest for his employees to reward the best failed idea in the company. His objective was to spark innovation and keep the company from avoiding risks. The motto behind this project is to reward failure and to build a culture of try-frugally-and-fail-fast among his employees.