The Tata Group
The first Tata company came into being in 1868 and it was built up incrementally and often through difficult times to become the behemoth that it is today.
Along the way, it spread itself across many businesses, creating what would have been a classic conglomerate, if it had stayed as one company. In typical family group style, though, it chose to pursue each business with a separate entity and by 2016, the group included more than 100 companies, with 29 of these being publicly traded, stand-alone entities.
The companies are all bound together by Tata Sons, which, in turn, is controlled by the Tata trusts, holding close to 66%, with power lying with the Tata family.
The largest non-Tata stockholder is the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, which control 18.4% of Tata Sons.
While each publicly traded company in the group is an independent entity, with a CEO and a board of directors (with a fiduciary responsibility to protect the shareholders of that company), the independence is illusory. Not only does Tata Sons own a significant piece of each company, the companies all own shares in each other (cross holdings effectively controlled by the family group) and directors representing family group interests serve on each board.
Though much is made of the conglomerate nature of the Tata Group, the group derives the bulk of its value (>70%) from TCS that derives most of its revenues from outside India.
The company's holdings and control structure in 2016
