Tata Group gifts USD 50 mn to Harvard Business School

TATA-HARVARD

Yoshita Singh
Boston, Oct 14 (PTI) India's Tata Group has given a
whopping USD 50 million to the prestigious Harvard Business
School here to fund a new academic and residential building on
its campus, the largest gift received by the institute from an
international donor in its 102-year-old history.
The gift comes from Tata Companies, the Sir Dorabji Tata
Trust and the Tata Education and Development Trust, the
philanthropic entities of the Group.
It comes days after Anand Mahindra, Vice Chairman and
Managing Director of Mahindra and Mahindra Group, gave USD 10
million to the Humanities Centre at Harvard. A Harvard
alumnus, Mahindra gave the gift, the "largest" in the Centre's
history, in honour of his mother Indira Mahindra.
Ratan Tata, Chairman of Tata Sons, attended Harvard's
Advanced Management Programme -- one of three comprehensive
leadership programmes offered by the Harvard Business School's
(HBS') Executive Education — in 1975.
He had also received the School's highest honour, the
Alumni Achievement Award, in 1995.
The School said it will use the USD 50 million gift from
the Tata Group to fund a new academic and residential building
on its campus for participants in its broad portfolio of
Executive Education programmes.
HBS hopes to break ground for the building, which will be
named Tata Hall, next spring. It is expected to be open for
use by late 2013.
Calling it a privilege and a pleasure to "give back to
Harvard a little bit of what it gave to me," Tata said he
hoped the new facility would encourage and inspire future
leaders to take advantage of the executive education offerings
at HBS.
"The Harvard Business School is the preeminent place to
be exposed to the world's best thinking on management and
leadership and we are pleased that this gift will support the
School's educational mission to mold the next generation of
global business leaders," Tata said.
Expressing "deep appreciation" for Tata's "generosity,"
Harvard Business School's Indian-origin Dean Nitin Nohria said
the "historic" gift comes from an organisation "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 dollar Tata Nano automobile
— but in a variety of business lines across several
continents, from cars to hotels and from tea to information
technology," Nohria said. (More) PTI YAS
RET



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