Tata Group of Industries
The story of Tata begins in 1868 when a young boy named Jamsetji Tata joined his father's small trading company. Thirty-five years later, that same boy was the owner of India's largest textile company, Tata Textile. Over the last century, Tata has excelled in many different business sectors including Materials (Steel and Mining), Agriculture, Energy, Consumer Products, Information Technology, Consultancy, Finance, Automobiles, Chemicals, Engineering and Hospitality. Tata Group of Industries reported $17.6 billion in revenues in 2005, which is equivalent to 2.8 percent of India's GDP. In 2006, it is projecting its annual revenue to be around $24 billion. Figure 1 shows the breakdown of Tata's revenues for the fiscal year 2004-05 between the separate business sectors and how much it contributed to Tata as a whole. Tata is one of the world's largest employers, and is the largest private employer in India with about 222,000 employees. India is known to many as a very diverse country; there are 26 states in India and the culture of each is extremely different from the others in language and lifestyle. This diverse culture within India makes Tata's human resources department work to lead major changes across the vastly different cultures of the employees that exist within Tata as a whole group. Tata's management training center located in Pune serves as a corporate school to help Tata's managers learn how to lead such a diverse workforce.
National Culture of India
There are several issues that need to be addressed before entering a new country expecting to maximize profits. One such issue is the culture of the country where the firm wants to enter, as there are many differences in the culture of business practices and ...