News: 'Outsider can take over from me' - Ratan Tata

(DNA 17/06/2006) Mumbai - The search for his successor is on, but it's more of a "submarine search", says Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons, the main holding company for the Rs 80,000 crore business group, the largest private sector business house in India.

The chairman of the Tata group, in an interview published in the latest issue of the Time magazine, said, "There is not an active search. There is a sort of submarine search."

He said the group will not restrict itself to a candidate from within the group.

"One would like to take someone from the group, but I don't think we're confined to that," Tata said.

"The board has given me until I'm 75. whether I stay that entire period or not… I reduced the 75 to 70 and then the board put it back. All it does is give me a little more leeway to put a successor in place", said Tata in the interview to the magazine's South Asia bureau chief Alex Perry.

The statement is significant say observers tracking the group.

One of the favourites for the post is Noel Tata who is being blooded. Noel is managing Trent Ltd, the group's retailing venture. He's also on the board of Voltas and Titan, the accessories company.

Speaking about his own tryst with the group, Tata confesses that "it happened by accident, in the sense that I may not have come back from the US. And so I could have had another life. If I look at my plan, when I was 23 or 24, at that point in time, it looked like a very pleasant life."

He came back because his grandmother with whom he was very close was ill. Speaking about his dream project- the one lakh small car, Tata Motors plans to produce all the high volume parts by itself. But only 50% of the total number of cars will be produced by itself.

The other 50% with very low cost, low break-even assembly facilities, we would franchise out to give young entrepreneurs who could assemble the cars and create a business for themselves," Tata revealed.