Tata Group: India's Biggest Multinational Corporation Essay. (70 Characters)

Tata Group’s Organic Growth Strategy

Describe about the  Tata Group Biggest Multinational Corporation in India?

Tata Group is considered to be one of the biggest multinational Corporation in India. The headquarters of Tata is situated in Mumbai, India. There are seven business units in Tata Group which includes information technology, Engineering, energy, materials, services, consumer products, chemicals and Communications. The establishment of Tata group was during the year 1868 by Jhamsetji Tata which was initially a trading company. Today the operations of Tata Group are carried in more than six continents and around 80 countries. There are seven sectors in Tata group which has operating companies more that hundred. The main companies under Tata group are Tata motors, Tata steel, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services), Tata Global Beverages, Tata Teleservices, Titan Industries, Tata communications and Taj Hotels. Total turnover of the 32 groups was approximately 8.4 Trillion till July 2014. The company earns more than 58% of its revenue from its foreign sectors (Financepractitioner.com, 2015).

Various charitable trusts own the shares of Tata group of companies. Cyrus Pallonji is the present Chairman of Tata Group, who came into power after Ratan Tata resigned from the post three years ago. Tata sons, is the promoter of all other companies and owns the maximum shareholding of the company.

According to a survey by ASSOCHAM, the enterprises and companies of the Tata Group is known to be India’s one of the best and well known brand, both inside and outside India. It achieved to rank the 11^th most reputable company according to an annual survey conducted by the Reputation Institute at the end of 2008. The Organization has helped to finance and establish a number of cultural and educational institutes in India. The Tata group is known to be awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy due to its long history in philanthropic activities in 2007 (https://www.livemint.com/, 2015).

Organic Growth is termed to the rate of business expansion through a company’s internal activities while Inorganic growth states that the company has grown through merging with or acquiring other existing companies. Inorganic Growth is a faster way to grow than organic growth as in organic growth the prime objective is cost reduction and productivity maximization. Most of the companies of Tata have applied inorganic growth strategies and is doing exceptionally well. Example, Tata motors have adopted an inorganic growth strategy and is in an increasing trend, Tcs too is highly inorganic, other companies that are inorganic are Tata tea, Tata communications and Tata Chemicals. Thus though, Tata has been following the inorganic growth strategy in recent years but initially it has been following Organic Growth strategies where it mainly developed through technological advancements, new product developments and innovation. Through organic growth approach, the company started many industries in India including steel, hospitality, power, airlines etc. The concept of growth was redefined once Ratan Tata became the chairperson in 1991 (Icmrindia.org, 2015). He restructured Tata Group and helped in the expansion f the company globally. The first major example of the company adapting to inorganic growth is when Tata acquired the UK based brand Tetley in 2000.In 2013 -14 again, there was a changing trend that could be seen in Tata group where after decades of following inorganic growth strategy, Tata Group again stepped into organic Growth strategy. Under the chairmanship of Cyrus Mistry, the ten most profitable companies of the group has invested around 95,634 crores on organic Growth.

Limitations of Organic Growth Strategy

Tata Group enjoyed much advantages of the organic growth strategy under Cyrus Mistry, through organic growth; Tata group was able to speculate the organization goals that the company would follow in the long run. Through this growth strategy, the management team was able to guide the company as per the goals of the company. Secondly, there was no cultural crashing as all the company employees were hired at the initial beginning of the business or were terminated to the recently established business. The business culture and norms will be preserved. Organic growth strategy of Tata Group was cheaper than the acquisitions of the company as when a company acquires another company they have to make payment of premium which is so costly that it can erase the whole worth of the acquisitions rather than enhancing the value of the shareholder. Moreover, organic growth has created better control and coordination for Tata Group. It is relatively inexpensive than inorganic growth strategy as the source comes from retained profits (Indianexpress.com, 2011). Tata Group was also able to avoid culture clashes that arise from acquiring new corporate where there is a clash between the new and existing corporate culture. But there are also many limitations of organic growth strategy for which the company under Ratan Tata switched to inorganic strategy after his accession. The organic growth strategy acquired a longer time to progress, as they require to start from the initial state including recruiting and hiring the human capital, setting up the whole business. Investing in machineries etc. moreover under organic growth strategy the business was bearing all the risks by themselves. The hierarchical structure of the company increases communication problems and the decision making was very slow. The communication under organic growth needs to be handled with more care and there is a need for training, retraining and updating the skill set for staff. There was another problem with organic growth and which is Tata group grow from partnership to public limited company and the original owners needed to share decision making with the new share holders and as a result the decision making was prolonged and there was conflict of interests between the shareholders.

When the responsibilities were taken by Ratan Tata,as the chairman of Tata Group in 1991, he rationalized the production and expanded it in the global forum. The first case of Tata group adopting inorganic growth strategy was the acquisition of UK bases Tetley by Tata tea in 2000.This incident was followed by a sequence of acquisitions by the company. Some of which are, Tata steel acquisition of Corus in 2007, Tata Motor’s acquiring Jaguar and land rover in 2008. Tata Group has recorded higher growth in revenues through inorganic augmentation. It also had to go through the risks and challenges of the proper management of the company’s portfolios. Tata Group is looking forward to South East Asia, United States and Europe for their inorganic growth strategy. The group has to take over all the challenges of acquiring companies from these parts of the World. The main aim of Tata group should be maintenance of the integration of the companies while preserving the culture of Tata. With this inorganic growth on the rise there is a need to optimize the portfolio of companies that has been acquired (John Sadowsky – Leadership & Storytelling, 2015). The acquisitions have helped Tata Group in a number of ways. The acquisition of Tata Steel of Corus helped the company enter the value added steel market in Europe. The Strategy of Inorganic Growth is frequently seen as a quicker way for a company to develop as compared to organic growth. IN industries such as technology, growth is often accelerated through increase innovation. One way for the company to grow is to align with those companies who are taking in innovative technologies. Inorganic growth strategy has helped Tata Group to enter new markets, to expand customer base, to grow and consolidate in size quickly, to cut competition and finally to employ new technology in respect to people, products and processes. The strategy of inorganic growth is to multiply revenue by takeovers, integration, spinoffs, joint venture and mergers and acquisitions. It can occur more quickly than organic growth. The Tata Group was benefitted by the larger pool of skills and experiences of the companies that is has acquired. It helped the company to acquire customers, assets, market position and sales immediately. It also has reduced competition for the Tata Group. However, there are many disadvantages of adopting inorganic growth as well. Inorganic growth strategy is more expensive than organic growth strategy. In inorganic growth Tata Group has faced multiple problems related to the integration of different cultures and organizational and management styles. There has been a possibility of diseconomies of scale. There have been greater risks for the company and also it was very difficult to control. Inorganic growth was more risky to the company as it involves acquiring new businesses, which have a different culture. It was also expensive for the Tata’s. According to the managing Director Ravi Kant, the biggest challenge that Tata Group faces today is the consolidation of their company. After the launching of the Nano, things have to be implemented on the ground. The other disadvantages of the inorganic growth strategy followed by the Tata is that when the company have joined forces with another company, the company has suddenly come across more employees and more assets to monitor. The company was growing indirections which it didn’t anticipate. Such as the vision of the second company can take over the vision of the mother company. The company had to enter into new marketplace where they lacked any expertise knowledge (Managementparadise.com, 2015).

Inorganic Growth Strategies Involved in Tata Group's Success

Tata Group has more than 300 subsidiaries and 100 at present with 40 businesses. The group faces many short term and long term problems in its pursuit of organic and inorganic growth strategies.

Short term problems:

The company needs to finance the short term borrowings and the day to day operations of the companies. In inorganic growth when two units merge there have to be many cultural issues among their employees. The Tata group has to undergo reformation of the resources but have to attach to the Tata group’s traditional viewpoint of not firing anybody. It is a very daunting task to add new business lines with the existing business lines (Mbaskool.com, 2015) .

The long term problems:

To build up the technological capabilities of the company a robust research and development team is needed. The company has to include the new customer bases of the newly obtained companies. The new clients have to be added in the company to make business more profitable. The company should create a brand image to draw more clients in order to increase the market share. Thus, a proper marketing plan and strategy is required keeping in mind the long term objectives of the enterprise. The human resource management will be a big challenge in the long term as the company needs to chalk out plans to sustain the current businesses as well as aim for business expansion in the future through inorganic and organic growth (Ray & Mukherjee, 2007).

The short term and long term problems that have been discussed above have long lasting impacts on the way the company manages its businesses and other resources.

A strategic Alliance is an agreement between two or more parties to pursue a set of objectives which have been agreed upon from before for the benefit of both the organizations while remaining independent organizations in the process. This form of co operations lies between organic growth and acquisitions and mergers.

Acquisitions and merging of a company are aspects of corporate finance, strategic administration and management dealing with the dividing, selling, buying and combing of different companies with other companies that help a company to expand rapidly without the creation of any subsidiary (Rigsbee.com, 2015).

Tata motors, is considered as India’s one of the largest company producing automobile which has business procedure in the countries like Spain, South Korea,  UK, Thailand, Indonesia and South Africa through associate companies and subsidiaries. The Business comprises of the two iconic British brand, Jaguar Land Rover. It has made a joint venture with Fiat Group of Automobiles, having a strategic coalition with Fiat in 2005 to manufacture both Tata and fiat cars and Fiat power trains. The Tata group has joint venture business in Ukraine, Senegal and Bangladesh. Tata Motors has a strategic alliance with Marco polo which is the Brazil based maker of coach bodies and buses (Roll, 2015). Other Associations of Tata are Tata Daewoo Commercial Vehicle Company, Tata motors European technical centre, Telco construction equipment company, Tata Technologies, Tata motors (Thailand), Tata Cummins, Hv Transmissions and HV Axlws, Tal Manufacturing Solutions, Hispano Carrocera, Concorde Motors And Tata Motors Finance.

Now coming to communications, it belongs to the bigger investments of Tata Group with an investment of over $7.5 billion. The Group’s communication actions are spread across four major companies i.e. Tata Teleservices limited, Tata sky, Tata Teleservices (Mumbai) and Tata Communications. Tata Teleservices Limited embarked on a growth path by the acquisition of Hughes Tele.com Ltd. in 2002. Over the last few years, the company has launched significant CDMA mobile operations under the brand name of Tata Indicom. Tata Photon and 2G GSM services are under the name of Tata Docomo in 2009. It has a joint venture with NTT DOCOMO of Japan. Tata Docomo was born after Tata’s strategic alliance with NTT DOCOMO, a Japanese telecom service in November 2008. Tata Docomo got a license to operate all over India and rolled over GSM services in all 18 telecom circles. Tata Teleservices Limited entered into a strategic alliance with Indian retail industry Future Group to offer mobile telephone services under the new brand name of T24. The TTL also had a strategic tie up with Virgin Mobile that mainly targets the young people offering both GSM as well as CDMA mobility services. Presently, The tata Group will invest around $35 million in order to lay special focus in aerospace, defence, retail, financial serviced and realty infrastructure for the next ten years (Rediff, 2015).

Tata International Limited again is a trading company that operates globally with a network of subsidiaries and offices in more than 39 countries in Asia, Africa, America and Europe. Tata Africa Holdings, the largest subsidiary of TIL has been the flag bearer of the Tata Group of companies since 1977 and had its headquarters in South Africa. Through this subsidiaries and Joint ventures worldwide Tata Group has made it large. Through mergers and acquisitions, Tata Group has been able to enter new markets in a faster way, it has been able to acquire new services and products, it has been able to learn new technologies, Acquire necessary skills and knowledge, Integrate vertically, geographically broaden markets and fill needs in the corporate portfolio. But there have been few disadvantages of mergers and acquisitions as well. The rate of turnover has increased due to M&A. Moreover, high premium rates, increase of interest costs, the high advisory fees, managerial distraction, less innovation are some of the inevitable risks and challenges of M&A. There are certain limitations of Strategic alliances that have been faced by Tata Group are, in strategic alliance, the company enjoys only partial control and only shared profitability and not the whole profit. The administrative costs of the alliance are much for the company, there is also a high risk of opportunism faced by the company as a result. Foreign joint ventures are more risky due to high chance of misunderstandings and miscommunications and lack of knowledge about the constraints of the external world.

Tata Group under the leadership of Ratan Tata started to expand globally by acquiring foreign companies during the beginning of 21^st century, when Tata Tea obtained the UK based Tetley Tea for $432 million. The inorganic growth strategy was initially tried in the year 1995 but at that time it failed miserably. The acquisition of Tetley gave Tata an impetus of international beverage brand. Tata Consultancy Services also acquired CMC with itself as part of its efforts to consolidate its IT businesses. The other IT companies within the Tata group are the Tata Technologies and Tata Elxsi. The other joint ventures of TCS are APONLINE, Airline Financial Support Services, Aviation Software Development consultancy, Conscript. Tata America International Corporation, HOTV, WTI Advanced Technology. Atul Takle, vice president of TCS said that TCS believes that inorganic growth such as mergers and acquisitions would see the company becoming the undisputed global leader sooner or later. To consolidate its position as the leading brand in the IT industry, TCS acquired a 51 % equity stake in CMC ltd in 2001 for Rs. 1.52 billion. CMC was the leading management, infrastructure, networking and Maintenance Company in India. Moreover to help the company through its mergers and acquisitions processes, TCS created a special M&A cell in 2001.TCS have also set up centers in the Hungary, UK, Australia, Japan and China. This helped the company strengthen its position in new markets (Sustainable-everyday-project.net, 2015). IN 2001, Tata acquired a controlling stake in Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) which is a government company. In 2004, VSNL acquired Tyco International’s telecom cables which are under sea. This made Tata the world’s largest carrier of international phone calls. In 2004, The Tata Motors purchased Daewoo Commercial Vehicle Company ltd, (DWCV). This was the first time that any Indian company has acquired a foreign automobile company. The acquisition gave Tata Motors to enter the Korean market, South East Asia and Chinese markets as well. After that Tata Motors acquired 21 % stake in Hispano Carrocera SA, a Spanish bus manufacturer. Tata Motors, in 2005, entered into an agreement with Thai Rung Union Car plc which was Thailand’s largest truck modifier pickup. Tata Motors got access within Asean region through this Acquisition policy. Tata Motors also entered into a JV with Marco polo which is a Brazil –based company which is the world’s largest bus manufacturer in India. In 2006 it entered into a series of alliances with Italian automaker Fiat Auto S.P.A. which gave Tata access to a number of technologies. In 2005, The Tata group purchased Incat International, A major vendor for American Aerospace Auto Company. Indian Hotels, Company like The Pierre, The Ritz-Carlton Boston and Camden Place was acquired by the Tata Group’s hotel business. In 2005, Tata Steel purchased The Singapore based manufacturer of Steel NatSteel Limited for US$ 486.4 million. This acquisition helped Tata Steel to access major Asian markets and also Australia. It also acquired The Thailand based Millennium Steel for US $ 167 million to strengthen its position in the Asian Steel Industry. In 2007, Tata Steel acquired a bigger company the Anglo Dutch steel company Corus Group Plc for US$ 13.70 billion. This acquisition made Tata Steel the fifth largest producer of steel in the world. According to B.Muthuraman, MD of Tata Steel, the acquisitions that the company did gave the company a strong foothold in South East Asia and provided the company the ground for expansion and consolidates their position in the region (Tata.com, 2015).

In 2008, Tata Motors acquired Jaguar-Land Rover for US$ 2.3 billion. In addition to this, Tata Tea acquired Tetley group, Tata Motors acquired Hispano Carocera, Tata Chemicals purchased Indo Maroc Phosphore, Indian Hotels acquired The Pierre, and Tata Coffee acquired Eight O’clock Coffee Company etc. These acquisitions significantly contributed to the Tata Group’s revenues internationally as well as domestically. Industry experts reported that the success of Tata Group could be attributed towards its global acquisitions since the group reported revenues internationally of US$ 48.3 billion for the financial year ending 2011. Many experts have opined that Tata Group has recorded growth through its inorganic growth strategy. In 2010, Tata motors won the ‘Indian Car of the Year Award’ for its Nano car. In this respect, Ratan Tata has said that hundred years ahead, Tata would be much bigger than what it is now. Moreover, The Company will be recorded as the best in India. Some analysts are of the opinions that Tata Motors Global acquisitions offered it strong synergies like good research and development capacities, expansion of product line and gaining of new markets. It also gave Tata Motors the opportunity to avoid risks by countering domestic market cyclicality through overseas markets. The acquisitions also helped Tata Motors to gain market access in countries like Western Europe, China, Latin America and South Africa (Tata.in, 2015).

Strategic Alliance refers to a conformity for collaboration among two or more than two independent entities that operates together in order to achieve a common goal (Volberda, 2011). Strategic Alliance is different from joint venture because entities under strategic alliance do not form a new organization to further their objectives. Mergers and Acquisitions are a form of Strategic alliance that deals with combining and dividing, buying or selling companies of different or similar type. These kinds of Strategic Alliance help in growth of a company without creating a subsidy (Petitt and Ferris, n.d.).

Tata Group under the leadership of Ratan Tata started to expand globally by acquiring foreign companies in the year 2000, when Tata Tea acquired UK based Tetley Tea for $432 million (Gaughan, 2010). The inorganic growth strategy was initially tried in the year 1995 but at that time it failed miserably. The acquisition of Tetley gave Tata an impetus of international beverage brand. Tata Consultancy Services also acquired CMC with itself as part of its efforts to consolidate its IT businesses.

The Global Distribution and Trading Company of Tata group is better known as Tata International Limited, it has subsidiaries and network of offices over 39 countries from Europe, Asia, America and Africa. The revenue of Tata International Limited is of US$ 1.7 billion in financial year 2014. Along with marketing competencies and sourcing the company’s leverage for their presence in the global market is maintained by providing good quality of products and services to their customers. The company has a strategic alliance with the major telecom NTT from JAPAN popularly known as DOCOMO which was inaugurated in 2008 (Petitt and Ferris, n.d.).  This acquired popularity for the Tata group in the telecom industry. Apart from that the Tata group acquired stake of companies in the global market such as Tata communications and BT group of UK, where they acquired 100% stake, Tata chemicals and British Salt of UK (wholly-owned), Tata Communications and Neotel in South Africa, Tata Global beverages with Grand from Russia and in many other countries.

Tata group has a strategy to think global in a local manner (Fernando, 2009). It adopted local culture for brand advertisement involving various cultural and social activities. For merging and Acquisition the Tata Group has a mindset of comprehending two entities and one. Even in promotions and advertisements the Tata group adopted globalization strategy in order to maintain competition in the global market.

According to the case study, major acquisitions like Tata motors acquisition with Jaguar led the global repertoire and presence of Tata Group to a higher level which earned them the position among the top players of Automobile Industry globally. Then the acquisition of NAT Steel limited was a big step in for gaining access in the international market of Steel. This is because Nat Steel owned mills in countries like Philippines, China and Australia. The operation of NAT steel is customer based.

Ratan Tata was born on 28^th December 1937. He is an Indian businessman born to the famous Parsee Tata Family and is the great grandson of Jhamshedji Tata. He became the chairman of Tata Group in 1991 to 2012. He received the Padma Bhushan Award in 2000 and the Padma Vibhushan award in 2008 from the government of India (Businesstoday.intoday.in, 2015). Under the leadership of Ratan Tata, the Tata group climbed new heights with inorganic growth strategy and acquired profitable and huge companies globally such as JLR and Corus and Tetley etc. The values of Tata Group of companies are reliability, faith and service to mankind. Training and development is an important aspect of the culture of Tata (Tata.com, 2015).

Ratan   Tata is a born leader. He is a game changer. The leadership qualities of Ratan Tata can be stated as: Faith and commitment, Social service, justice and responsibility, global aspiration, trust, quality and real value of money. Creativity and industriousness and good understandings are the qualities of a true leader that Rattan Tata possesses. He is a visionary, who had a vision to see Tata as the biggest group of India in the coming hundred years (Tata.com, 2015). He is a strategist who initiated a proper blend of inorganic and organic strategies in making Tata group one of the leading companies worldwide. He is an initiator and a risk taker. He took the risk of establishing the Niño factory in Singer in west Bengal where he faced many political issues related to land acquisition and finally he faced the loss of 1500 cores but he overcome this challenging period and re formed his factory in Sunland Gujarat. He is also a champion of change. He is an expert in long term thinking and managing everything with ease. Finally he is a man of integrity, where he is very polite with employees, reserved and calm. He is also a workaholic where he has never left any work for tomorrow. For his strategic management, Rattan Tata also received the first award for Responsible Capitalism. In May 2008, Rattan Tata’s name was published among the World’s topmost 100 influential people.

As the Tata Group conduct their business in a boundary less world it has contributed in innovation toward processes, thoughts, strategies and approaches (Sadler, 2003). The Tata’s consider innovation as the means to produce, new and relevant services and products. The three prolonged strategy that the company has invested on across companies and business sectors are recognition of Innovative efforts and ideas, better communication initiatives and facilities that make it able for the company to learn from other companies (Kakabadse et al., 2011). Tata Group Innovation Forum (TGIF) is a vibrant network connecting Tata companies globally fostering collaboration and research and stimulating innovative thinking (Mellahi, Frynas and Finlay, 2005). The forum establishes number of workshops and events and accelerates communication between Tata managers, innovation academicians and experts.TGIF invites experts and academicians regularly in the field to conduct seminars and workshops which introduce new innovation tools and concepts and stimulate among tata mangers innovative thinking. Ratan Tata was affirmed that to make Tata Group the top most company, it was necessary to create technologically exciting and superior products. In order to distinguish it from other companies the Tata’s have to depend on innovation and low costs. Ratan Tata was keen on the company to enter new markets as he felt that global competition would make the company more efficient .That is why Ratan Tata opted for inorganic growth strategies in order to expand its business opportunities and make it huge globally. As a result, the Tata Group operated in several sectors ranging from engineering, materials, energy, products, chemicals, communications information technology to services. These sectors contributed towards doubling the company’s revenue both internationally and domestically. For the year ending 201 the international revenue of Tata group reported was around US$ 48.3 billion given to the inorganic growth strategy of the Tata Group.

Tata Group the largest conglomerate in India is reported to be one of the world’s largest group of industries. Under the table leadership of Ratan Tata, the company embarked from organic growth strategy to inorganic growth strategy. Organic growth strategy was essential for the growth of the company internally, to review the functioning of different industries and take resort of its revenue. But Inorganic growth strategy helped the company gain an international reputation worldwide. Tata Group with its immense acquisition policies have become one of the world’s largest company in many sectors. As for example with the acquisition of Corus, Tata Steel became the 5^th largest manufacturer of steel worldwide and also with the purchase of Jaguar-Land rover Tata motors became the huge manufacturer of cars (CRAINER, 2010). The innovation technology of Nano car happened when Ratan Tata once saw a family of four people travelling in a bike when he saw the dream of giving the middle class families of India a car which can be affordable by them within 1 lac INR. Nano went to become the most innovative technology in India and it gained huge success. Ratan Tata is a born leader and has far sightedness to see the future of Tata Group through inorganic growth strategies. He is a risk taker, and despite facing a huge debt of around 1 trillion he did not give up the hope of seeing Tata as India’s largest company in the future.

Conclusion:

Tata Group is an Indian Multinational Corporation whose headquarters is in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Tata group is the 11st largest Group worldwide. According to the analysts Tata has grown due to its organic and inorganic growth strategies. Through inorganic growth strategy, Tata Group has acquired many famous companies, worldwide, and had become India’s one of the largest manufacturing company.

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