Turnaround, like a Tata!
Mr Praveen Kadle, Managing Director and CEO of Tata Capital Limited. A graduate in Commerce & Accountancy from Bombay University and a Chartered Accountant, Cost & Works Accountant and Company Secretary. He joined the Tata Group in 1996 as the Chief Financial Officer of Tata’s Joint Venture with IBM in India. Later, he was transferred to Tata Motors Limited as the Vice President (Finance) and was instrumental in the hugely successful turnaround of Tata Motors. Including the cross-border acquisitions like Daewoo of South Korea and Incat Technologies of the UK.
A very interesting story related to the successful turnaround emerged last year from Mr Kadle, while speaking at an award ceremony.
Tata Motors was in a bit of trouble after it’s fledgling car business did not take off as planned. The hatchback Tata Indica was launched and received a poor response, as a consequence, the company wanted to sell off the passenger car division. Ford showed interest and invited a team from Tata to visit them in their headquarters at Detroit. What followed was an extremely unsavoury incident, Ford officials were extremely dismissive of Tata’s ability to make cars and arrogant about their own prowess. They informed the Tata officials that Ford would be doing them a favour by buying Tata’s passenger car division.
It’s no surprise that the Tata team was deeply offended and decided to fly back to New York the same evening. Not long after this incident, within a decade, Ford found itself in a bit of a situation themselves and had to sell off their marquee brands, Jaguar and Land Rover. And who would help them out of the situation by buying these two brands? A now successfully turned around Tata Motors of course. Poetic Justice!
