MUMBAI: As a little boy growing up in a farming family on the banks of the Cauvery in Mohanur, Namakkal district of Tamil Nadu, Natarajan Chandrasekaran walked miles every day to reach his government school. That daily rigour, born out of necessity, perhaps laid the foundation for the discipline that would later define his life. He became an obsessive runner and marathoner and would eventually help start two major annual running events, in Mumbai and New York.
Chandra begins his day at 4 am, wherever he is in the world, with a run, regardless of how late he went to bed the previous night. That discipline served him well in scaling career heights that few from his humble beginnings could have imagined. Unlike most of his schoolmates, many of whom went on to join their family farming businesses, Chandra chose engineering. Not at one of the elite IITs, but at the government engineering college in nearby Tiruchirappalli.
Through campus placement, he landed his first job at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in 1987. That marked the beginning of a four-decade journey with one of India’s most respected corporate houses, the Tata Group.
Beginning as a trainee engineer, Chandra rose through the ranks to become CEO of TCS in 2009. Under his leadership, TCS became India’s largest software company and one of the world’s biggest technology services firms, employing more than half a million people. Its annual revenue crossed $30 billion in FY26.
His corporate journey had two defining headline moments. The first came in 2009, when he took charge of TCS and transformed it into a global technology powerhouse. The second came in late 2016, when Ratan Tata chose him to occupy the chair that he and his illustrious uncle, JRD Tata, had held, from February 20, 2017 -- the chairman of Tata Sons.
His latest headline-grabbing moment came on August 12, when he announced that he would not seek reappointment as chairman of Tata Sons when his current term ends in February next year.
What made the announcement remarkable was not merely its corporate significance but the grace with which Chandra handled it.
He informed board members of his decision through an email and then went about his day as usual. He urged employees not to be distracted or disheartened by his decision. Institutions, he stressed, must always be bigger than the individuals who head them. The advice, delivered with characteristic poise, came after more than six months of efforts to reach an understanding with Noel Tata, chairman of the Tata Trusts and, in effect, the principal shareholder representative of Tata Sons.
As the first non-Parsi and professional chairman of Tata Sons, Chandra leaves behind a group that is markedly different from the one he inherited. An affable person, he would often personally stand by to wish every journalist goodnight at the annual Christmas-New Year parties hosted on the terrace of the TCS headquarters, which often stretched into the early hours, he oversaw a sweeping transformation of the Tata Group.
Under him, the group expanded aggressively into businesses seen as critical to the future — semiconductors, electronics, defence, smartphones, aviation, electric vehicles, batteries and the digital economy.
According to a Tata insider, one of Chandra’s biggest achievements was the mindset change he brought about among employees and executives through his One Tata vision. He pushed for greater capital discipline across group companies, strategic acquisitions, diversification into future-facing sectors, mergers and demergers, and an exit from non-core businesses.
As a Tata lifer of four decades, few understood the sprawling group as deeply as Chandra did. He consistently pushed it to think bigger, move faster and make bold bets on the future.
Among his major consolidation moves was the creation of Tata Consumer Products by combining Tata Tea’s beverages business with Tata Chemicals’ consumer products portfolio. He also oversaw the merger of AirAsia India, Air India and Vistara into a single airline entity and the demerger of Tata Motors into separate passenger vehicle and commercial vehicle businesses.
Chandra, the quintessential Tata lifer, is likely to be remembered as the professional who remade the group in one of its most transformative and ambitious phases -- but lost the boardroom. His exit also brings to an end the simmering tensions that began to surround Bombay House, the headquarters of the Tata Group, and the ownership structure of the group after the death of Ratan Tata in October 2024. His death altered the balance of power. And, ultimately, the fate of Chandra.