Ratan Naval Tata (born December 28, 1937, in Surat) is the present Chairman of the Tata Group, India's largest conglomerate founded by Jamsedji Tata and consolidated and expanded by later generations of his family.

Tata was born into the wealthy and famous Tata family of Mumbai. He was born to Soonoo and Naval Hormusji Tata. Ratan is the great grandson of Tata group founder Jamsetji Tata. Ratan's childhood was troubled, his parents separating in the mid-1940s, when he was about seven and his younger brother Jimmy was five. His mother moved out and both Ratan and his brother were raised by their grandmother Lady Navajbai.

Ratan Tata completed a BS degree in architecture with structural engineering from Cornell University in 1962, and the Advanced Management Program from Harvard Business School in 1975. He joined the Tata Group in December 1962, after turning down a job with IBM on the advice of JRD Tata. He was first sent to Jamshedpur to work at Tata Steel. He worked on the floor along with other blue-collar employees, shoveling limestone and handling the blast furnaces. Ratan Tata, a shy man, rarely features in the society glossies, has lived for years in a book-crammed, dog-filled bachelor flat in Mumbai's Colaba district.