The big Western firms themselves then rushed to hire in India; IBM is now India's second-largest private-sector employer, just after TCS.
Its high profits help fund growth, and Tata Sons could raise almost $12 billion by reducing its stake in TCS, its technology arm, from 74% to 51%.
The steel business, for example, is highly indebted and investing heavily, while the technology business, TCS, generates lakes of cash and has a balance-sheet with a net cash position.
Ratan Tata took a close interest in some parts cars, for example—but remained hands-off with others, such as TCS.
Tata Tea successfully took over Britain's Tetley Tea in 2000, linking Indian tea output to drinkers overseas, and this year Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the group's software and services arm, set up a business-process outsourcing operation in Britain with Pearl, a life-assurance group.
Mercedes puts air-conditioning controls in the back as well as the front of its cars because people who can afford a Mercedes can also afford a driver.But GE and TCS are doing something more exciting than fiddling with existing products: they are taking the needs of poor consumers as a starting point and working backwards.
This miracle of compression sells for $800, instead of $2,000 for a conventional ECG, and has reduced the cost of an ECG test to just $1 per patient.In Chennai, 200 miles (326km) farther east, Ananth Krishnan, chief technology officer of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is equally excited about an even lower-tech device: a water filter.
Rick Goings of Tupperware and Natarajan Chandrasekaran of TCS agreed that the only way to avoid being blinded by complexity is to concentrate on the few simple things that can give their businesses focus and their workers direction.What to make of these two contrasting views of complexity?
TCS, India's biggest IT firm, now has 46 clients which spend over $50m a year.
The biggest, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), trumpeted a 36% increase in revenues, to a shade under $3 billion.
Yet TCS gets nearly 20% of its work from Britain, double what it gets from the rest of Europe put together.
