Ratan Tata, the man who created an Indian colossus, dies at 86

Ratan Tata, the former Tata Group chairman credited with building the Indian company into a sprawling global conglomerate with a string of high-profile acquisitions, has died at the age of 86.
Tata, who ran the group for more than 20 years, had been undergoing intensive care in a Mumbai hospital.
After graduating with a degree in architecture at Cornell University in New York, he returned to India and in 1962 began working for the group that his great-grandfather had founded nearly a century earlier.
He worked in several Tata companies, including Telco, now Tata Motors, and Tata Steel, later making his mark by erasing losses and increasing market share at the conglomerate’s National Radio & Electronics Company. In 1991 he took charge of Tata Group.
The group purchased Tetley, the tea company, in 2001 for $432 million, and Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker, in 2007 for $13 billion — at the time, the biggest takeover of a foreign business by an Indian group. Tata Motors then acquired Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Company in 2008 for $2.3 billion.
His pet projects at Tata Motors included the Indica — the first car designed and built in India — as well as the Nano, touted as the world’s cheapest car. He contributed initial sketches for both models.
The Indica was a commercial success. The Nano, however, priced at just 100,000 rupees (about $1,200) and the culmination of Ratan Tata’s dream to produce an affordable car for India’s masses, was hurt by initial safety issues and poor marketing. It was discontinued a decade after its launch.
A licensed pilot who would occasionally fly the company plane, Tata, who never married, received the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian honour, in 2008 for exceptional and distinguished service in trade and industry.