For the 1st time, Bombay House to shut for renovation

MUMBAI: For the first time in its 93-year history,

Bombay House

, the headquarters of India’s largest corporate house, Tata Group, will be closed for business for nearly a year as the iconic building undergoes renovation. The decision to refurbish the structure comes five months after N

Chandrasekaran

, the group’s seventh chairman, occupied the corner office.

More than 600 employees, including many working out of the heritage property for decades, will be relocated to other Tata offices in the city. Chandrasekaran and his core team will move to a rented address close to the HQ.

The facade of the structure will remain the same as external changes are restricted in heritage buildings. The insides will undergo a Rs 80-crore makeover with hi-tech architectural features like a digital lobby.

Keeping in sync with the digital age, Chandrasekaran wants the new office to be tech-abled and agile, with a flat and open look.

“We want to create a workplace that’s more collaborative, contemporary and youthful,” Chandrasekaran told TOI. “The spirit of the group will remain, yet bring in newness, making it more relevant to today’s workforce. We are proud of our past, but we need to take responsibility of thinking about our future and shaping it.”

One of the high points of the revamp will be a kennel that will house the strays that have made Bombay House their home. These dogs, which can be spotted at the HQ entrance at any time of the day, have been adopted by chairman emeritus Ratan Tata, whose love for canines is well known.

It was in 1921 that then chairman Dorabji Tata, the elder son of group founder Jamsetji Tata, bought the 21,285 sq ft prime plot in south Mumbai from the Bombay Municipality for Rs 3.6 crore as the group couldn’t accommodate its growing ventures at its previous office at Navsari Chambers. At that time, the group ran six businesses: textiles, steel, power, hotel, cement and a bank.

The three-storey Bombay House, which was constructed in 1924, was designed by Scottish architect George Wittet, who is known for his iconic creations like the Gateway of India and the Prince of Wales Museum. Wittet, who was also on the board of Tata Motors, designed 44 buildings for the group.

Dorabji formed a separate entity, Associated Building Company, with a capital of Rs 1 crore, to take care of Bombay House’s maintenance, with each Tata company pooling in their shares. The only change that was made to the HQ after it was constructed was in 1942, when one more floor was added during JRD Tata’s tenure. Since then the fourth floor has become a revered one, with the group chairman operating from there.

Even during this addition and in 2011, when a fire broke out at the HQ, the office was never shut. This will be the first time Bombay House will be going in for a transformation and will be shut for at least eight months, most likely from November, said Brinda Somaya of Somaya & Kalappa Consultants, which is redoing the HQ.

It was from this building that the group conceptualized Air India, the nation’s first airline in 1932, TCS, India’s first software services unit in 1968, and picked up Tetley tea, the country’s first cross-border brand buyout in 2000.

The $104-billion conglomerate intends to reopen Bombay House by mid-2018, just in time for the group’s 150th anniversary. Sources say CEOs of select Tata companies and key personnel will have offices in the refurbished HQ. Currently, eight Tata companies and Tata Trusts function from the Edwardian neo-classical building.

Somaya said the location where the HQ stands is very noisy, and one of her tasks will be to make the building sound-proof. “The plan is to move offices out of the ground floor while retaining a few things like the auditorium (which has witnessed several annual shareholder meetings) and power sub-station.”

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