Rare facts about Ratan Tata: Did you know he is a trained pilot?

Born in 1937, Ratan Tata is the great-grandson of Jamsetji Tata who founded the Tata Group. Ratan Tata’s father Naval Tata was the adopted son of Ratanji Tata and Navajbai Tata. Earlier, Naval Tata was growing up in J.N. Petit Parsi Orphanage. Navajbai Tata, the grandmother of Ratan Tata was very fond of him. When Ratan Tata was just 10 years old, his parents got separated in 1940 and then he was raised by his grandmother.

Talking about his childhood days, he said that though his life was happy, his parents' divorce posed some problems as it was unconventional at that time. His parents, Naval and Sooni Tata, divorced when he was only 10.

Ratan Tata and his brother then lived with their grandmother Navajbai Tata, with whom he shares close affinity. The industrialist said that the values in him were instilled by his grandmother only and even now, he leads his life with those values. "Our grandmother taught us to retain dignity at all costs, a value that's stayed with me until today," he said.

Ratan Tata is an alumnus of Cornell University in the United States where he studied mechanical engineering and then switched majors to finally graduate with a degree in architecture. It was at the advent of his college life that he first tasted independence. "I was finally my own, independent person in college," he said.

Ratan Tata’s first job was managing operations on the shop floor of Tata Steel in 1961. He became the chairman of the Tata Group in 1991 and he took the conglomerate to new heights. During his 21 year tenure, the revenues of Tata Group grew over 40 times and the profit increased over 50 times.

The Tata Group, under his leadership, endowed a scholarship fund of $28 million towards Cornell University to provide aid to undergraduate students from India.

The group donated $50 million to construct an executive centre at Harvard Business School, which was named Tata Hall.

The group also donated Rs 950 million to Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and created the Tata Center for Technology and Design (TCTD) to further innovation in engineering.

Ratan Tata is a skilled pilot. In 2007, he became the first Indian to fly an F-16 Falcon.

Ratan Tata is unmarried. He has admitted that he came close to marrying four times, but could not go through with it for various reasons.

Ratan Tata accomplished some historical mergers for his company including Land Rover Jaguar with Tata Motors, Tetly with Tata Tea and Corus with Tata Steel. All these mergers played a significant role in the Tata Group’s phenomenal growth.

He is an ardent dog lover. Since the days of JRD Tata, the Bombay House, the Headquarters of Tata Sons has a tradition of letting stray dogs in during rains. After its recent renovation, the Bombay house now has a kennel for stray dogs. This kennel is equipped with toys, play area, water and food. This tradition has continued under Ratan Tata who had great love for dogs. He has two pet dogs fondly namely Tito and Maximus.

In 2009, he envisioned Tata Nano car, the cheapest car of India worth Rs 1 lakh. He delivered on his promise.

In recent years he revealed details about his heartbreaking love story and how he 'almost got married'. Speaking to Humans of Bombay, the philanthropist said that he fell in love once in Los Angeles but could not marry his lady love. "It was in LA that I fell in love and almost got married," he said. However, due to some family issues, he had to come back to India and his relationship didn't flourish. I "thought that the person I wanted to marry would come to India with me, but because of the 1962 Indo-China war her parents weren’t okay with her making the move anymore, and the relationship fell apart," he added.

Being a car lover himself, he has a grand collection of high-end cars including Ferrari California, Cadillac XLR, Land Rover Freelander, Chrysler Sebring, Honda Civic, Mercedes Benz S-Class, Maserati Quattroporte, Mercedes Benz 500 SL, Jaguar F-Type, Jaguar XF-R, and some others.

Under his able leadership, the revenues of the Tata Group grew more than 40 times. The profits abounded by over 50 times. The company that made only $5.7 billion in 1991 made around $103 billion in 2016.