#Tatastories: 40 Timeless Tales to Inspire You

TATA STORIESHarish BhatFull disclosure: Harish Bhat, the author, was my batchmate during my MBA days at IIMA. This review covers three topics—Harish Bhat, the Tatas, and the book itself.A 2013 article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported that IIMA is the toughest MBA school to get into in the world with a *minimum* score equivalent to 770 on GMAT. Even if it were to be debated if it’s THE toughest, everyone will agree that it is *extremely* difficult to get into. So, the entire class consisted of academic kings. But even amongst the kings, there will be an emperor. In our batch, actually, three people stand out in my mind—Harish Bhat (and Raghuram Rajan and Nachiket Mor). The latter two would go on to impact the lives of millions. But Harish Bhat (yes, most people used his full name) had already started serving the community from the very beginning at IIMA. The “community” he was serving was us, his fellow batchmates. While everyone was smart, our sadistic professors (and I say this in a nice way) had the uncanny ability to create the most difficult problems requiring the simplest of math skills. The grading was brutal. So, before every exam, Harish Bhat would offer cram sessions that were heavily attended and a lot of us benefitted from them. Later, he would go on to reach the ultimate heights in corporate India. Today, he is the Brand Custodian at Tata Sons, the Chairman of Tata Coffee Limited, and a Director on the Boards of several other Tata Companies, including Trent Ltd., Tata Starbucks Pvt. Ltd., Infiniti Retail Ltd., Tata Unistore Ltd., and Tata AIA Life Insurance Company Ltd.The Tatas are an industrial and commercial powerhouse in India but now have a global presence with prominent brands like Taj hotels, AirAsia, Jaguar, etc., serving 150 countries. They have always been known as an extremely ethical company in the land, where unethical behavior and corruption often ran rampant. If you are not familiar with them, you should at least look at their wiki page.Coming to the book, Harish shares 40 stories from the archives of the Tata Group. While the stories span several decades (a century and a half?) and numerous personalities from the group, some common threads ran through all of them. The picture that emerges is one of an extremely upright group of owners and management, who, while seeking profits, made sure that they served the country, and boosted the lives of Indians. They would pursue grand visions, put everything on the line, and almost invariably deliver with meticulous execution. They are known for starting leading academic institutes, research centers, a supercomputer, an airline, a dominant automotive brand, a steel factory, and numerous branded, consumer goods, all bearing the Tata seal of quality and reliability. They never cut corners. Jamsetji Tata, the founder had already started offering pension plans and compensation securities in 1880s, which was unheard of then. Later, e.g., the group would make sure that there will be a lake next to the industrial plant, which was well-taken care of in a nod to protecting the environment. So, it would be fair to say that they were already pursuing—with sincerity—what a century later came to be called CSR (corporate social responsibility) and sustainability.The stories are, to use the clichéd term, inspiring. It certainly helped that the same points were hammered again and again—never blatantly—in every story. So, it became inescapable to not let that sink in. I can truly say that after reading it, I feel inspired to do the right thing, and in a way disappointed that I did not do more to serve my community.