Following Noel Tata’s appointment as Chairman of Tata Trusts, confidence is growing around the scaling of Tata’s consumer business.
Gurcharan Das, former CEO of Procter & Gamble India, believes Noel’s leadership will bring stability and strong guidance to the group.
He expects Noel Tata to play a key role in expanding Tata’s consumer-focused ventures with a steady influence.
Bijou Kurien, Chairman of Retailers Association of India & Former COO of Titan praises Noel for steering Trent, building the business himself, and handing over the reins to capable professionals. He noted that Noel’s leadership reflects a thoughtful and strategic approach to expansion.
These are the verbatim excerpts of the interview.
Q: What are your impressions of the man, what would you expect? Because what Trent has accomplished is absolutely phenomenal at a time when we were talking about the K-shape recovery, and it was only the premium segment that was working for consumption Trent has charted its own path. Your thoughts?
Das: I think it was a non-event, which is to say that the smooth takeover of the Tata Trust by Noel from Ratan reflected good planning, good common sense, and the difficult job in this case was not this one. The difficult job had been done in 2017 when the family separated ownership from management and appointed an outstanding professional, Chandrasekaran, as CEO to manage the large group and Ratan Tata became head of Tata Trusts.
What you did was you separated ownership from management, which is the Achilles heel of Indian business. This is a very important lesson for India Incorporated. The family had already given up control of running the business, and therefore no family member could aspire now to become head of the CEO of Tata Sons and this is the rightful role, a rightful role of a family is governance and to exercise control through the board.
This is the ultimate lesson of Noel Tata’s rise and of Ratan Tata’s departure. I just hope that Indian businesses will look at this. Because, as I said, it’s common sense that one’s relative is unlikely to be the best candidate in competition with the best in the world. Business families still have to learn to exercise ownership through the board of directors.
The argument that a professional manager cannot be a risk taker, like a family member, that too doesn’t hold. It only means that you haven’t selected the right person to be CEO.
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Q: What lies ahead for the group. Trent and what has happened with that company, the way it has metamorphosised and just completely burst through the ceiling, and they are disrupting every single day, whether it’s Zudio, now it’s lab-grown diamonds, a lot of private labels. I am not sure if you will be able to tell us this, if you are privy to it, does it really have full Noel Tata stamp all over it or is it perhaps the freedom that he gives to the day-to-day executives who run that business? What have you made of the Trent story and your impressions of Noel Tata?
Kurien: The most important thing is that Noel has actually steered this company right from the beginning, having actually built the business himself and then handed over the reins of the business to professionals who are capable of running both the Westside format and the Zudio format. But clarity of strategy that Noel has actually exhibited during the journey of Trent is something which is remarkable.
And what he has done has actually been to be able to build this business in the manner that is the most desirable way without getting distracted, without getting into areas which might not be core. That’s what Noel’s got, whether it’s private label, the sharp pricing, the way they have created the assortment of products for the stores, all of them have been outstanding from a retailer’s perspective.
Then, of course, the diversification into Zudio, which is the fast-fashioned brand, that’s also been another area where he has exhibited an uncanny understanding of the market, the opportunity which exists. What we can see with Zudio today is, obviously, the fruits of that strategic thinking, which has helped Zudio to become even larger than Westside at this point of time.
So, in all of this, what you can see is that there is clarity of strategy, there is determination, there is persistence in terms of vision, and he doesn’t get discouraged and every single action that you are seeing that he has taken has always been about deliberate thinking and careful expansion, nothing silly, nothing fast, and nothing for the short term.
So, all of this is what you can see in the business, and I think courtesy that both the company and he has earned the respect of other retail professionals. At the RAI, which is the Retailers Association of India, we’re very happy to have him on the board and he has helped us be able to think through several issues, guide the board at crucial points of time and has been great counsel for us.
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Q: I wanted your view on this big debate last week, Titan was one of the biggest losers in the Nifty pack, while Trent was one of the biggest gainers. That’s because Trent forayed into lab grown diamonds. Many analysts believe that this should have been done under Titan. What is your view on that, they are competing in similar segments?
Kurien: It’s a bit difficult for me to actually opine on the individual strategies of both Titan and Trent and who’s probably the the best suited to enter the lab grown diamonds business. But all I can say is that lab grown diamonds as a category is certainly making its presence felt and there is expectation that lab grown diamonds would actually become a larger part of the diamond market, grabbing a little bit of share from the natural diamonds market.
In that context, whether Titan was best suited to be able to complement its entire portfolio of natural diamond brands alongside another lab grown diamonds brand, or whether it’s a fashion company like Trent, which can move into the costume and fashion jewellery space with lab grown diamonds, making it kind of complementing the range of apparel, which is better. And if you ask me, both are opportunities.
There is a serious diamond jewellery buyer who might want to consider lab grown diamonds, but certainly at much higher prices. And there is also an apparel buyer who might actually want to complement what she is buying in the apparel space, along with a line of fashion jewellery made out of lab grown diamonds. So, there are opportunities for both people, and it’s only the occasion of use which makes a difference.
One might be a more serious brand purchase where the occasion of use is a little more formal and the other might be a very casual opportunity to purchase. So, both have the right to play, who should have done it first is a different question, but both of them can actually do things with lab grown diamonds which will certainly complement each other without treading on each other’s toes.
Q: The retail space is going through a major disruption right now. Quick commerce is delivering everything from soaps to an iPhone to T shirts to kurtas and here we have a man, Noel Tata, who really understands the consumer. So under him, are we going to see a Tata Group, while it’s traditionally been all about steel and heavy manufacturing and Tata Motors and all of that, but could the consumer face of the group get an even bigger focus? For instance, would you expect them to go out and disrupt per quick commerce in a big way. Take on Reliance retail in a very big way. What would you expect in the first year of Noel Tata taking office, what are the changes, or what are the sort of big announcements that you would perhaps expect?
Das: He is a sensible guy. He had the job of retail, and he did it brilliantly. So Bijou has explained it much better than I could. What I think we should expect from him is good sense that he is going to steer Tatas in the right direction. Also, we need the visionary spirit of Ratan, also to be there and so he could, what you have just laid out is a greater intrusion, greater involvement in the retail space. Yes, all these are coming, but it will be done in a measured fashion.
What I think of him is a sensible person who will make sure that the ship is steady and going. In some sense, despite the forays that Ratan took, he kept that in order. And that’s really the role Noel’s role. Let’s hope that the CEO Chandrasekaran, will run with the ball, when the opportunities arise, it’s going to be a good relationship between the two will be very important.
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