The making of an Indian Multinational

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US companies, Indian companies too will have a big chunk of their business coming from the home market. We are never going to be 90% international. That doesn’t make sense,” says Rosling.

But it is the second dimension to the internationalisation process that separates the group from its peers in India. It pertains to how and where a company adds value to its products, or ‘a disaggregation of the business system’. “The Tata Group has been able to take advantage of the way the globe is changing. You have got the opening up of the markets, including India, and the government is allowing you to try different things,” says Rosling. Technology has enabled group companies to service markets in many ways, be it physical movement of goods or freight rates coming down,” he adds.

What counts is not just an integrated model of managing raw materials and production lines, but also managing human resources. The group faces the gargantuan task of integrating nearly 40,000 employees of Corus, across their plants in the UK, with its Indian steel company. While it does so, it also needs to be sensitive to the demands of the British steel unions, who do not want job cuts. “The integration of Corus workers will be marked by tolerance of differences and localisation,” says Rosling, adding that the integration process is unprecedented, and that the group will make its own rules as it goes along.

What we see is the morphing of an inwardly focussed business giant into a multinational, but Rosling feels the group will have a long way to go before it can claim to be in the league of MNCs like General Motors or Siemens.

The group is now readying for a new game, involving China in many aspects of the supply chain. It will source, make and sell things in the dragon country. Revenues and sourcing from China are both expected to double. The Tata Group has been there since 1986, but now it is viewing the Asian giant as a priority country as part of its internationalisation efforts.