Ratan Tata, whose Indian business empire spanned the globe, died at the age of 86

Ratan Tata, one of India's most powerful and admired magnates who transformed his family's business conglomerate, the Tata Group, into a multinational corporation with globally recognized brands, died on Wednesday in Mumbai. He was 86.

The Tata Group announced his death a statementwhich did not specify a cause. He was treated in a hospital's critical care unit, Reuters reported.

During his 21 years as chairman and chief executive from 1991 to 2012, Tata Group profits grew 50-fold, with most of its revenue coming from overseas sales of iconic Tata products such as Jaguar and Land Rover cars and Tetley tea.

Despite the conglomerate's international outreach, under Mr. Tata's leadership its influence at home was greater than ever. For middle-class Indians, it was almost impossible to spend a day without buying Tata products and services. They wake up with Tata tea, surf the Internet with Tata Photon, watch Tata Sky programs on television, ride in Tata taxis or drive their own Tata cars, and use countless products made by Tata Steel.

In the early 2010s, other family-led business groups rivaled or surpassed the Tata Group in revenue and valuation. But none of the new magnates enjoyed the public respect of Mr. Tata, who was famous for investing the bulk of his wealth in philanthropy and startup businesses by young, underfunded entrepreneurs.

The Tata Group's unusual ownership structure adds to Mr. Tata's appeal. The parent company, Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd., held a majority stake and two-thirds was owned by a charitable trust endowed by members of the Tata family.

Mr. Tata prefers to stay out of the limelight and projects a public image of a shy recluse, a man who has never married or fathered children. But late in his career he was embroiled in a major controversy when he convinced the Tata board to oust his chosen successor. The ensuing legal dispute took years to resolve and was the subject of regular media attention.

Ratan Naval Tata was born on December 28, 1937 in Bombay, now Mumbai, during the British Raj. His family belonged to the Parsi ethnic community, whose Zoroastrian ancestors had fled persecution in Persia centuries ago and found refuge in India. Mr. Tata became the leader of that community.

The Tatras made their fortunes in the opium trade and textile mills with China in the 19th century. When Ratan's father Naval Tata became the deputy chairman of the family business, the Tata Group was engaged in a number of manufacturing and commercial ventures.

Naval Tata was married to a cousin, Suni Tata, but they separated when Ratan and his younger brother Jimmy were children. Both boys were raised and adopted by their wealthy grandparents.

“I had a happy childhood, but as my brother and I grew up, we faced a bit of ragging and personal discomfort due to our parents' divorce, which was not as common in those days as it is today,” Mr. Tata recalled in a three-part Facebook interview posted in 2020.

He grew up in Mumbai in a white Baroque Revival-style building known as the Tata Palace, with a staff of 50 servants, and was driven to school in a Rolls-Royce. He was sent to the United States for high school at Riverdale Country School in New York City. He graduated from Cornell University with an architecture degree and later took management courses at Harvard University Business School.

Mr. Tata maintained a subdued social life. He devoted most of his leisure time to driving sports cars, flying airplanes and sailing his speedboat from the harbor near an apartment he kept in Mumbai.

His survivors include his stepmother, Simone; his younger brother, Jimmy; half-brother, Noel; and two half-sisters, Shireen and Dina JJVoy.

Mr. Tata joined the family business in 1962, initially working at Tata Steel Shops. He then rose steadily through management positions. His lone foray was into the conglomerate's troubled electronics subsidiary, which he initially succeeded in turning around only for it to collapse during the economic downturn. A few years later, the subsidiary, NELCO, became profitable again, particularly in satellite communications.

In 1991, JRD Tata stepped down after half a century as chairman of Tata Sons and the Tata Group and handed over leadership of the group to Ratan Tata, who belonged to a different branch of the Tata family.

The succession was bitterly opposed by other members of the Tata family and business managers. “JRD is involved in nepotism and I was labeled as the wrong choice,” Mr Tata said in his Facebook interview.

Mr. Tata mollified resistance and consolidated his leadership by forcefully retiring Tata's older executives (softening the blow with generous pensions), reporting subsidiaries to the group office and initiating the globalization of the family business.

He tapped into a nationalist groundswell by pursuing a so-called “reverse colonialism” — acquiring British-based brand-name companies like Jaguar, Tetley and Corus Steel.

“Britain becomes an 'insourcing' hub for Ratan Tata: the base for an Indian multinational's overseas operations,” wrote The Guardian in a 2008 article.

In another popular move, Mr. Tata spearheaded the production of the world's cheapest car in 2008, the Tata Nano, priced at $2,200, within the reach of the average middle-class Indian consumer.

In 2012 at the age of 75, Mr. Tata relinquished his executive duties at the Tata Group. In what was supposed to be a smooth transition, he appointed as his successor Cyrus Mistry, 44, whose family was the conglomerate's largest individual shareholder.

Instead, the succession has become one of the most high-profile corporate controversies in India's recent history. Since they announced Ratan Tata as the group's successor two decades ago, other Tata family and board members opposed Mistry's choice. But Mr. Mistry won with Ratan Tata's support.

Over the next few years, however, tensions grew between Mr. Mistry and Mr. Tata, who still wields powerful influence as chairman of Tata Trust, which controls most of the company's shares. Mr. Mistry divested several businesses backed by Mr. Tata, and Mr. Tata disapproved of Mr. Mistry's handling of the group's international steel business and telecommunications ventures.

In October 2016, less than four years after being appointed as head of Tata Corporation, Mr Mistry was ousted from the Tata board with the full support of Ratan Tata. Mr. Tata resumed his position as chairman of the organization in February 2017 until a successor was named by the board.

But Mr. Mistry did not remain silent. He sued the Tata group claiming that his removal was illegal. His allegations that the board fostered nepotism, ignored minority shareholders and tolerated malfeasance were often given sensational media coverage over the next five years.

Initially the court ruled in favor of Mistry. But in 2021, India's Supreme Court finally upheld the validity of Mistry's dismissal, ending the saga.

The controversy diverted attention from Mr Tata's far-reaching philanthropy. In India, he distributed much of his personal fortune to educational, health, and agricultural projects for poor Indians. In the United States, he and the Tata Trust have contributed millions of dollars to various universities — including his alma maters Cornell and Harvard Business School — for research facilities and scholarship programs bearing the Tata name.

Enterprise and philanthropy have been at the heart of the Tata empire since its inception in 1868 by founder Jamsetji Tata. Jamsetji's factories were among the first in the world to invest substantially in employee welfare, and he and his two sons left most of their property and company shares in charitable trusts.

Mr. Tata has backed more than 50 startup companies in India, including e-commerce and digital payment platforms and an online underwear retailer. But his favorite was a startup called Goodfellows, which encouraged friendship between older and younger Indians in business and other professions.

At the launch of Goodfellow in Mumbai in 2022, he told an intergenerational audience, “You don't mind getting old until you're old, and you think it's a tough world.”

Shalini Venugopal Bhagat And Bernard Mokam Contribution reporting.