Few companies carry as much weight in a single country as Tata does in India. The sprawling group makes everything from cars and steel to software and salt, and for more than a century it has stood as a byword for trust and national pride. Now its leaders are spending enormous sums to push into industries India has never dominated. The ambition is breathtaking, the bill is large, and so far the rewards have been slow to show up.
A conglomerate remade
The architect of this push is Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company at the centre of the empire. Since taking charge he has tried to turn a loose collection of businesses into a sharper, more modern group aimed at the industries of the future. That has meant pouring money into areas far from Tata's traditional strengths, in a bet that India's next era of growth will run through factories and technologies the country currently buys from abroad.
The big bets
The list of new ventures is striking. Tata is building a semiconductor plant, an attempt to give India a foothold in an industry it has almost entirely lacked. It is assembling iPhones for Apple, having bought its way into the supply chain that the world's most valuable company is shifting out of China. It is making electric cars and the batteries to power them, and it has taken on the long and costly job of reviving Air India, the troubled flag carrier it bought back from the state.
Why the patience
Each of these bets shares a common trait. None pays back quickly. Chip factories take years to build and longer to run at a profit. Turning around an airline means absorbing losses while new planes arrive and old habits change. Building a presence in electric vehicles and batteries demands heavy spending well before the sales catch up. Tata is, in effect, planting trees whose fruit will not arrive for a decade or more.
