Ratan Tata, Chairman of Tata Sons announced $50 million gift to Harvard Business School, Boston through their philanthropic arm – the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and the Tata Education and Development Trust.
“The money, the largest from an international donor in the School’s 102-year history, will fund a new academic and residential building on the HBS campus in Boston for participants in the School’s broad portfolio of Executive Education programs. The School hopes to break ground for the building, which will be named Tata Hall, next spring.” – source.
Incidentally, Harvard Business School also designated an Indian Nitin Nohria as its dean less than a year ago. Mr. Nitin expressed appreciation for the Tata Group’s extraordinary generosity. “This is an historic gift from a renowned organization revered for its significant economic, civic, and philanthropic impact. The Tata Group is widely respected for integrity and innovation, not just in India—where it produced both the first indigenous car and the $2,000 Tata Nano automobile—but in a variety of business lines across several continents, from cars to hotels and from tea to information technology,” said the dean.
Indeed the Tatas, as I mentioned before, have values larger than many enterprise around the world. I have personally been a witness to their foresightedness and uprightness on a landscape with fewer resources and which did not score too well in terms of politics and ethics.
Also see: Letter from a Girl to JRD Tata
Note from Ashish: How about Mahendra & Tata(s) of India world giving funds to Indian institutes as well? I am pretty sure that Indian technology colleges need funds as much as Harvards of the world. In lieu of funds, most of these Indian colleges end up ‘giving into’ demands of babus (the ‘unofficial govt quota’) and there starts mediocracy.
