Who's the guy behind the car that costs less than a big-screen TV? Who's the man behind the brand that is now ranked No. 57 in the world in terms of overall value? Or the gentleman who is one of the hardest to track down for an interview, yet is the most talked about person in the automotive world?
Two words, nine letters and one big difference in the landscape of car production in the 21st Century.
"Ratan Tata isn't satisfied," reported Business Week magazine. "He wants the world."
In Tata's world, nearly everything is within reason.
In March his company took control of Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Company. In January, his Tata Motors, of which he is chairman, introduced a ground-breaking car.
"He sees no boundaries and barriers," David Good, the former U.S. consul general in Bombay, India and now Tata's North American representative, told Investor's Business Daily newspaper. "What seems impossible to other people, he finds ways to make possible."
Ratan Tata discusses his plans after taking over Aston Martin and Land Rover from Ford.
Five years ago he promised to price a car at the equivalent of about US $2,500. It would be a car cheap enough for the average buyer in India to afford.
The idea seemed doubtful.
But in January 2008, the 70-year-old Tata stood front and center at the New Delhi, India, auto show and introduced the Nano. The price was as promised, making it the cheapest new car on the planet.
Though it lacked flourishes such as a radio and air conditioning and had only a 33-horsepower engine and one windshield wiper, it looked as stylish as Mercedes-Benz's Smart car. And the Nano could seat five people.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Tata said to a throng of spectators. "I invite you to join me in this journey of innovation and evolution."
Although he's chairman of Tata Group, India's largest conglomerate, Tata isn't averse to taking risks. His car idea was inspired by a problem he saw everywhere: whole families crammed onto a single motor scooter. He wondered how he could get them into something safer.
He challenged suppliers and engineers to think differently.
"They took a clean sheet of paper and said, 'How are we going to create a vehicle that is one lakh (about $2,500)?'" said Daryl Rolley, senior vice president of Ariba Inc., a supply-chain adviser to Tata, in an interview with CNN. "It's easier to start with an existing product and pull costs out."
But who is he? What makes him tick?
Ratan has never married and for the last 20 years has lived alone in a modest, book-filled seafront house outside Bombay from where he drives himself to work each day in a small Tata car.
His best friends are believed to be his dogs. And while enjoying celebrity status in India, he is rarely seen in public.
"There is a great sense of loneliness from time to time," he admitted, during an interview with the British press last year.
After attending a private school in Bombay, he studied at Cornell and Harvard Universities in the United States and decided to stay on and accept a job with IBM instead of joining the family Tata Group company in India.
But Tata's plans to escape the family firm were altered following his grandmother's ill health and he returned to India, first spending three years working on the floor of a steel mill, just to understand what it took to belong in a factory.
By the mid-1960s he was running the family's steel operations. He rose, steadily through the Tata hierarchy, finally becoming chairman just at the moment that India became a free market.
Despite slimming the group down to 80 companies from more than 250, reducing the labor force by close to 40 per cent and selling off millions of dollars worth of non-core assets, he was able to point to rapidly rising profits and a far more modern, technological industrial base to build a future upon.
Eventually Tata Motors was a leader in commercial trucks in India. Now Ratan Tata, a car enthusiast, urged his team to enter the car market.
He had just the kind in mind: a compact hatchback.
Not everyone shared his enthusiasm. Many doubted customers would buy the car due to perceptions that India-built products lacked quality.
"I had a great sense of fear that it may not work out. We never designed a car before. India had never done it," he told a local reporter. "Everyone was telling us that we were foolish."
He went ahead anyway and in 1998 out rolled the Indico. It became the Number One compact car in India.
He wasn't done. In March, he beat out two rivals for Ford's Jaguar and Land Rover business. He was personally involved in negotiating the US $2.3-billion deal.
Now comes the Nano that will go on sale later this year.
Some critics wondered why Tata would pursue Jaguar and Land Rover while launching the world's cheapest car.
Tata pointed out that multinational firms have no qualms about selling products that target all income levels. Just look at Nissan and Toyota with their small cars as well as their high-end Infiniti- and Lexus-branded machines.
"He sees himself benchmarked against global companies, not Indian companies," said company representative David Good.
Some think he won't stop there.
The world is indeed the limit.
Steven Reive is a feature writer with Wheelbase Communications. You can drop him a note on the Web at www.wheelbase.ws/mailbag.html. Wheelbase Communications supplies automotive news and features to newspapers across North America.
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