Tatas gift Rs220 crore to Harvard Business School

The Tata Group has donated a whopping $50 million (Rs220 crore) to the prestigious Harvard Business School (HBS) to build an academic and a residential building on the institute’s campus in Boston, Massachusetts.

The amount is the largest from an international donor in Harvard’s 102-year-old existence.

The new building will be called the Tata Hall and used for the institute’s executive education programmes, Harvard said in a statement.

Nitin Nohria, dean of HBS, called the donation a historic gift. “The Tata Group is widely respected for its integrity and innovation, not just in India, but in a variety of business lines across several continents, from cars to hotels and from tea to information technology,” said Nohria, who became the first India-born dean of the institute earlier this year.

Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, attended HBS’s advanced management programme in 1975. In 1995, he received HBS’s highest honour, the Alumni Achievement Award.

The donation from the Tatas follows a $10mn-gift from Anand Mahindra, vice-chairman of Mahindra & Mahindra, to the Humanities Centre at Harvard University last week.