Digital Transformation at Tata Steel

T.V. Narendran, CEO of Tata Steel, India’s oldest steel manufacturing firm, had taken concrete business and cultural transformation steps to future-ready the firm since taking over in 2013. He had deleveraged and instilled financial discipline, acquired new businesses, entered new segments and adjacent businesses, and launched digital transformation, agility, safety, and sustainability programs. At the heart of his transformation program lay the digitalization drive. Now, he turned his attention to the firm’s burgeoning B2C business. In 2018, the firm had launched an e-commerce platform to sell products directly to retail customers. Now he needed to decide whether to open up this platform to non-Tata group third-party suppliers of ancillary home construction products, like cement, paint, tiles, and other home fittings. Would this create a unique one-stop shop for construction-related goods, or take Tata Steel further away from its core mission? He and his team needed to decide fast.