When Ratan Tata made this request to SEBI chief for TCS’ first CEO FC Kohli during TCS IPO – Times of India

Ratan Naval Tata passed away earlier this week at a hospital in Mumbai. Tata Group’s chairman emeritus was India Inc’s most-loved and respected leader. As several industry doyens said in their tribute to Ratan Tata, what he said was regarded as universal truth. Ratan Tata’s demise marks the end of an extraordinary corporate journey, one that not only made Tata Group a global giant but also set new benchmarks for Indian industry on the world map.
Under his visionary leadership, Tata Group’s revenue surged from $4 billion in 1991 to over $100 billion by 2012, when he retired, making it the first Indian business group to achieve this feat. One major milestone in this was the IPO of the group’s software company — Tata Consultancy Services — in the year 2004. TCS made history with the first $1 billion initial public offering (IPO) by a private-sector company in India. TCS is Tata Group’s most valuable and India’s second-largest company in market cap.
Ratan Tata led TCS’ public listing. He even took part in some roadshows done for the TCS IPO. Writing for Economic Times, Sunil Sanghai, founder and CEO of NovaaOne Capital, shared an incident from the TCS IPO that showed how, as he wrote, “the tallest member of the Indian industry (Ratan Tata) remembered every contribution and it was very important for him to recognise them.”

Sanghai on Ratan Tata’s special request for TCS CEO to SEBI chief

July 2004, with torrential Bombay monsoon lashing outside, Mr. Ratan Tata got off the podium at the Ball room of Taj Mahal Hotel, Colaba. He had just announced the launch of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Initial Public Offering (IPO), the most high-profile IPO of Indian capital markets then. There were quite a few capital market players and media people still waiting to interact with him. In this chaos he expressed his keenness to go meet the then SEBI Chairman, Mr. G N Bajpai. Almost at no notice, I, a young investment banker then, was handed the task of setting up this meeting at SEBI’s Nariman Point office.
I was clueless as to why Mr. Tata would want to rush to meet the SEBI chairman, and that too in such wet weather conditions. He had barely completed a very successful launch conference and there were people still wanting to meet him. But when we arrived at the SEBI headquarters, I was pleasantly surprised with the agenda of the meeting.
Mr. Tata started the meeting by saying, he requested for a short notice meeting for two reasons. First, he wanted to thank SEBI for their support through the IPO process. Second, and equally importantly, in his persuasive deep voice he said that Mr. F C Kohli, first CEO of TCS, had been instrumental in building an institution like TCS for the Tata Group. Mr. Tata therefore expressed his desire to allot one share to Mr. F C Kohli as a symbolic gesture in recognition of his contribution.
In another gesture of his humility, the bankers who accompanied Mr. Tata for the TCS IPO roadshow were very pleasantly surprised to receive a handwritten personal letter of appreciation from him. These small acts and values in totality are what made Mr. Tata the Redwood tree of the Indian corporate world – the tallest figure that leaves a mark that stays with you always.