Something about Tata

You're more likely to see him in the driver's seat of a Tata Safari than being driven around in a fancy sedan. Noel loves driving-fast-but, perhaps, the only time he gets to indulge is once his six-and-a-half-day week is done. Don't be surprised to see him, along with a couple of his Trent colleagues, driving out of Mumbai early morning to neighbouring Pune or Nashik on "site visits" as they look around for potential locations to put up their stores.
Himanshu Chakrawarti, COO of Landmark, Trent's books and music subsidiary, says that it is immensely possible to catch Noel in the corridor to bounce a few ideas off him. K.M. Bharuka, Managing Director of Kansai Nerolac, on whose Board Noel is an Independent Director, adds: "He is very approachable by nature, not just for me, but also for junior members of our team who feel they can seek advice from him.
For a man who's the only Tata (apart from RNT) in the close-to-100-company Tata Group at a director level, such unfussiness is remarkable (RNT's younger brother by two years, Jimmy Tata, had worked in various Tata companies; he retired in the '90s). Also, at 53, Tata is now one of the more senior CEOs in the Group after a recent spate of retirements (see The Bombay House Shuffle, page 54). And if you consider that he is the son-in-law of Pallonji Mistry, who owns roughly 18 per cent in Tata Sons, making him a larger shareholder than RNT himself, Noel should be blazing a trail at Bombay House.