Ratan Tata dies at 86

Ratan Tata, the former Tata Group chairman who put a staid and sprawling Indian conglomerate on the global stage with a string of high-profile acquisitions, has died, the Tata Group said in a statement late on Wednesday. He was 86.

Tata, who ran the conglomerate for more than 20 years as chairman, had been undergoing intensive care in a Mumbai hospital, two sources with direct knowledge of his medical situation said, reports Reuters.

After graduating with a degree in architecture at Cornell University, he returned to India and in 1962 began working for the group his great-grandfather had founded nearly a century earlier.

He worked in several Tata companies, including Telco, now Tata Motors Ltd as well as Tata Steel Ltd, later making his mark by erasing losses and increasing market share at group unit National Radio & Electronics Company.

In 1991, he took the helm of the conglomerate when his uncle J.R.D. Tata stepped down - the passing of the baton coming just as India embarked on radical reforms that opened up its economy to the world and ushered in an era of high growth.

In one of his first steps, Ratan Tata sought to rein in the power of some heads of Tata Group's companies, enforcing retirement ages, promoting younger people to senior positions and ramping up control over companies.

He founded telecommunications firm Tata Teleservices in 1996 and took IT firm Tata Consultancy Services, the group's cash cow, public in 2004.

But to grow properly, the group determined it needed to look beyond Indian shores.

It "was the quest for growth and changing the ground rules to say that we could grow by acquisitions which earlier we had never done," he said in an interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2013.

The group purchased British tea firm Tetley in 2000 for $432 million and Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus in 2007 for $13 billion, at the time the biggest takeover of a foreign firm by an Indian company.

Tata Motors then acquired British luxury auto brands Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Co (F.N), in 2008 for $2.3 billion.

His pet projects at Tata Motors included the Indica - the first car model designed and built in India - as well as the Nano, touted as the world's cheapest car. He contributed initial sketches for both models.