I liked this article in Globe and Mail which coincided with the 60th Anniversary of our Motherland and I really felt proud.

http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070815.wibasia0815/BNStory/robColumnsBlogs/home




India's nice, but Tata wants more
MARCUS GEE

Globe and Mail Update

August 15, 2007 at 7:57 AM EDT

Tata Group is the biggest conglomerate in one of the world's fastest growing markets. But being a huge firm in a huge country isn't enough for chairman Ratan Tata, the latest in a long family line to lead the venerable Indian firm. He has set his sights on something even bigger: making Tata India's first truly multinational company. One day, he hopes, Tata will be his country's global brand, as recognizable as Japan's Sony or Finland's Nokia.

Even a decade ago, it would have been easy to dismiss Tata's ambitions. Back then it was still an overwhelmingly Indian company. Founded in 1868 by industrialist and nationalist Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata and built by his successors into a maker of everything from trucks to salt to software, it was well-known and respected at home but virtually invisible overseas. Then, six years ago, Mr. Tata gathered his top executives in the gentlemanly confines of Bombay House, the company's marble-floored headquarters where vanilla ice cream is distributed at 3 p.m. daily. Tata, he told them, was going international.

Since then Tata has made 22 foreign acquisitions. Its hotel group, which owns the ornate Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, has snapped up Boston's Ritz-Carlton and New York's Pierre hotels. Another arm of the company bought a host of undersea communications cables from Tyco International, making Tata the biggest carrier of international telephone calls in the world. Meanwhile Tata's automobile arm bought the truck division of Daewoo Motor Co. Ltd., the South Korean giant. Tata's latest big gulp saw it swallow the Anglo-Dutch steel maker Corus earlier this year for $13-billion (U.S.)

And that is only the beginning. Tata, which already has operations in 54 countries, has plans to invest billions more overseas in the next few years. The latest rumours have Tata Motors Ltd. buying Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Co. Already, Tata has seen its international revenue grow from 22 per cent of the company's total take in 2003 to more than 60 per cent today.

The obvious question is, Why? Why go to all the trouble of doing business in Uruguay and China and Hungary when things are going so well at home? India's economy has been pelting along, with a growth rate of 9 per cent in the last couple of years. Tata has been expanding to meet the domestic need. At the moment it is building three brand new steel plants, two new automotive factories and a series of power plants -- all right at home in India.

Part of the reason for the overseas drive is sheer ambition and national feeling. Mr. Tata made it clear that pride had a lot to do with his stubborn pursuit of steel maker Corus. But there is more to it than that.

Mr. Tata is no robber-baron capitalist. Retiring and modest in personal style, he drives himself to work in a simple family car. His company gives away much of its wealth to charity through a series of trusts and endowments.

So he is not buying things just for the sake of owning them. He believes that, in the modern world, going global is simply a matter of necessity. It spreads the company's risk over many countries and regions, so it is less exposed to a downturn back home. It builds efficiency by letting companies manufacture for scale. And it keeps his companies abreast of international advances in technology and business practice.

One of his top executives, Alan Rosling, a Briton whose presence in the Tata hierarchy symbolizes its internationalism, was in Toronto last week to give a speech. He explained that the global strategy began after Tata Motors suffered the biggest corporate loss in Indian history in 2001, a result of a sharp drop in truck sales. The company realized that as long as it was in just one market, such painful swings were inevitable. \"We think you have no choice: very carefully but aggressively move into other markets.\" Seen this way, Tata's internationalization is less a product of daring than of caution.

Whatever its motives, the strategy stands to transform both Tata and, by extension, Indian business. Indian companies were involved in 177 merger and acquisition deals in 2006, compared with 99 for China. With more talented executives and more flexible management, Indian companies are showing they are ahead of China in what Harvard business professor Tarun Khanna calls \"soft infrastructure\" -- brains instead of bridges.

If other Indian companies can emulate Tata's attempt to become a truly modern multinational -- technologically up to date, talent-rich, geographically and culturally diverse, serving many markets from many places -- then India may find itself catching up to China in the great race of the 21st century.

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Pramod Chopra
Senior Mortgage Consultant
Mortgage Alliance Company of Canada

Great guy. Did you see him on BBC on Monday? BBC is doing a series on India this month. Very interesting. Should check it out.

He's unmarried, so like any takers?

No, I have not seen him on BBC.

Can you please tell the time the series on India is aired on BBC?

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Pramod Chopra
Senior Mortgage Consultant
Mortgage Alliance Company of Canada

Thanks, but no thanks Tata's. I really don't want my good paying IT job to outsource to TCS. Good going Canada.

Well..almost all IT jobs are being outsourced to India. My Company closed down entire IT department in Canada and US last month and all operations are being outsourced into india (Including desktop support)


Good luck

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"The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be"