The Tata Group encourages innovation across all business sectors

The Tata Group plans to promote the development of innovative programs at the group level in all of its companies. Currently, most of the group's companies innovate in isolation and independently of each other, said Mukund Govind Rajan, a member of the conglomerate's executive board.

In 2007, the Tata Group Innovation Forum (TGIF) was formed as a first step towards bringing all these events together. “The group's thinking needs to be directed towards something more concrete in order to create an incubator of new ideas. We have yet to decide on the direction of innovation and define plans for the coming years,” said Rajan, speaking at a press conference.

Several companies in the group, such as Tata Industries and Tata Capital, have adopted a capital risk aversion agenda for new ventures. “The entire group is currently spending about 2.5 percent of total revenue on innovations that will be rolled out in the coming days,” said chief Tata Sons.

More than 7,000 successful innovations have been developed by a team of 25,000 people. “While TGIF is still more focused on process optimization, cost reduction and productivity, we are trying to use it to create new products and services,” said Rajan.

TGIF also runs a Group-wide program called Tata Innovista, which aims to foster innovation among its employees. Tata companies around the world introduced 1,010 promising innovations in 2013-2014.