Ratan Tata: Innovating India’s Tomorrow

Learn English with Ratan Tata. Explore the wisdom of Ratan Tata in two powerful addresses: one at the inauguration of Cancer Hospitals in Assam, and another inspiring talk with entrepreneurs at T-Hub. As the patriarch of Indian industry and the former chairman of the Tata Group, Ratan Tata speaks on healthcare innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit that promises to drive India’s future. Discover his unique perspective that melds compassionate healthcare with cutting-edge innovation in these compelling speeches.

Ratan Tata addresses at the foundation stone-laying and dedication of Cancer Hospitals in Assam.

Honourable Prime Minister, Honourable Chief Minister and members of the audience. I can’t make a speech in Hindi, so I shall try to communicate with all of you in English. The message will be the same. It will be from my heart. Today is a very important day in the history of the state of Assam. It is a day that raises Assam to a higher level in terms of health care and treatment of cancer that has not been experienced by the other states in the country. It really is a day that cancer, which is not a rich man’s disease, is being equipped to serve and treat the millions of people that are inflicted. None of this would have taken place if it had not been for the insight and futurism of our enlightened Chief Minister, who has been the driving force in this entire activity. And of course, none of this could ever have happened without the support and the earnest desire to give Assam the recognition it deserves, and that would be our Honourable Prime Minister. This Prime Minister and his government have achieved many great advances, and it is humbling and at the same time a question of great pride to know that this event today is the culmination of many months of very advanced thinking. I should not bore you with more statements. I should just say thank you very much, and thank you, Mr Prime Minister and Mr Chief Minister and the government, for all that they have done. I dedicate my last years to help make Assam a state that recognises and is recognised by all. Thank you very much.

Ratan Tata gets nostalgic about building companies and shares his experience with 300 entrepreneurs and dignitaries at T-Hub.

Walking around this T-Hub building this afternoon could not but help me feel that I was looking at a new face of India, one of the new faces of India, the face of entrepreneurship, innovation and enterprise. Entrepreneurship and the sense of enterprise is not new in India. We are a nation of people who have been shopkeepers, small cottage industry managers and owners. We have done this over the years. We have been entrepreneurs, be it in agriculture, be it in traditional industries, and yet we have not been recognised all over the world as an enterprising country. What we have not done is registered ourselves as an entrepreneurial nation in the new technologies of the world, the technologies that do not require billions of dollars to establish, that do not require hundreds of acres to build, enterprises that are built on innovation that is in your mind, non-traditional, untried and sometimes risky, but that make a big, big difference in the world of tomorrow. This is what elevated the United States in the 80s into a new world of technology and high tech. It changed the way we live, it changes what we hold in our hands in terms of phones, communication, and yet India has only been a part of it through people who left India and gone elsewhere. And why? Because the environment here didn’t support them.

I grew up in an environment where if you had an idea, your boss or your manager politely told you, and sometimes not so politely, that you need to gain some experience before you open your mouth. You need to roll up your sleeves and spend five years on the shop floor. Then you can talk. And that’s not what enterprise is today. Enterprise today is an ability of someone who may be in his 20s, who has a good idea, and he needs to find a way to implement them. We now have an environment of venture capital that listens to that person. And we have a facility like this to enable that person to try out his idea, to bring it into reality of fruition in a manner that is interdisciplinary, open, and unifying.

So this is, in fact, the first look at the new India of tomorrow. Tomorrow, day after tomorrow, et cetera. Not only in e-commerce, not only in e-retailing, et cetera, but in the exciting area of medical remedies, medical treatment, stem cells, life sciences. And this can be the starting point of that new wave. And so it’s a great privilege to be here today. This is an area that needs all of our support and needs for us to be proud of what we have. But it needs for us to be keen to not be satisfied with what we have, but to go further and to be leaders in the world, not in the country alone. So my enthusiasm in the new India of tomorrow continues to be there. I continue to feel the need to support enterprising young Indian engineers and scientists. And all of us should be very pleased to play this role and need to support this, because all of us should be keen to unleash the Indian tiger. And we haven’t done that as yet. So let’s all put our hearts and souls behind the fact that this is going to be the new India of tomorrow. And what we’re seeing in this building is just the start, just the nucleus of what could be the new big, big thing in the country. And thank you very much for it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.