| India Forum features Tata executive 
Photo by Morgan Burkett
Touching on everything from corporate responsibility to his country’s entrepreneurial spirit, R. Gopalakrishnan, executive director of Tata Sons, one of India’s preeminent business conglomerates, addressed a crowd of several dozen during last Wednesday’s India Forum. Gopalakrishnan, who also serves as director of several Tata companies, including the automobile, Internet, and power divisions, discussed his company’s tradition of philanthropy. About 66 percent of the company’s equity capital is held by philanthropic trusts endowed by members of the Tata family. The money funds college scholarships and other community initiatives. Gopalakrishnan said each of Tata’s 246,000 employees—who work at 96 companies on six continents—realize that the business “is run for some greater purpose than ourselves.” “An employee can go to work and say that, in some way, the effort to sell an extra part” went to a good cause, Gopalakrishnan added. Gopalakrishnan also commented on investors’ interest in his country, which he said is the result of Indian companies “cleaning house” and getting “costs down and quality up.” “If you read our history, we’ve always been entrepreneurial and aggressive,” he said. “Now I think people have begun to notice.” —AF |
