These are busy times for the charismatic head of the house of Tatas — he has taken charge as chairman of Tata Teleservices, the group’s flagship company in telecom, and he’s been personally overseeing developments at Tata Motors.

Not content with the take-over of Daewoo’s commercial vehicle facility in South Korea and Tyco Global last year, Tata has added Singapore-based NatSteel to the group’s portfolio, picked up a 21 percent stake in a Spanish bus maker, Hispano Carrocera, and bought into a chemicals company Imacid, in Morocco, He now plans to set up an engineering centre in the UK for designing next gen cars.

With these global initiatives, Tata has emerged as one of the most prominent faces of India Inc abroad, with the Tata brand and Tata Consultancy Services becoming synonymous with IT outsourcing , the world over.

Back home, the group has enjoyed considerable respect and influence for over a century now, and there are no signs of that diminishing. When the Indian government decided to set up a committee to attract foreign investment late last year, it naturally chose Ratan Tata to chair it. His big dream is to produce a car for the masses, priced at less than Rs.1 lakh. Going by his passion for the project, one can be sure that it’s well on its way to becoming a reality.

Thirteen years back, when Tata took over the reins of the conglomerate, he was not only stepping into the shoes of legendary entrepreneurs like Jamsetji Tata and JRD Tata, but also had to steer a company which was dominated by individual fiefdoms and was about to face a liberalised economy.

Today, the 100-year-old group is larger and stronger than it was ever before. It took on the might of the multinational automobile manufacturers by launching the country’s first indigenously-made car — it operates one of the lowest-cost steel factories in the world and the largest private sector power utility company in the country and owns the largest integrated tea operation in the world. The Tatas aren’t just a household name in the country.

Over the last one year the group’s cars have rolled out in the UK, and it has acquired a Singapore-based steel company and is going to operate one of the world’s largest under-sea cable networks in the world — all part of Ratan Tata’s ambitious dream to emerge as a multinational entity.

An architect by training, Tata is now obsessed with a recently bought electronic piano and is on the lookout for a suitable piano teacher. At 67, there has been much speculation about Noel Tata being his possible successor, but Tata continues to remain mum on the subject.

Somewhat shy and reclusive yet fiercely aggressive, Ratan Tata may have stepped down from an executive role as the chairman of the Tata Group in 2002, but he is no less a force in India Inc.

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