 No. 45 Ratan Tata, chairman, Tata Group
Last year's position: Not placed
Ratan Tata is something of a surprise entry on the Agenda Setters list, largely because he heads up the whole Tata conglomerate and not the Tata Consulting Services IT services business. But without Tata the man it is unlikely there would have been Tata the company.
His uncle, JRD Tata, bravely appointed the young Ratan Tata as his successor in 1991 at a time when the company had been allowed to stagnate and decline into an overblown conglomerate under an ageing and increasingly out of touch leadership unable to adapt to the modernisation of the Indian economy.
Ratan pulled out his blueprint for growth that had been buried by the previous board and targeted emerging business sectors for rapid growth, bringing back an entrepreneurial culture to the company. The panel felt Tata should be included because "he epitomises growth and not just in IT".
After a decade of hard work, Tata is now 2.4 per cent of India's GDP and has fingers in every pie including cars, steel, IT and telecoms. Tata plans to retire in three years, with speculation that his half-brother Noel Tata will take over, but in the meantime his focus is to make Tata into a global giant.
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