Tata Trusts Appoints Neville Tata and Bhaskar Bhat as New Trustees

Neville Tata, the son of chairman Noel Tata, and company veteran and former Titan managing director Bhaskar Bhat have been appointed to the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT) board by Tata Trusts. They will both be in office for three years. In accordance with a new Maharashtra government regulation that limited the number of lifetime trustees to one-fourth of the total, the board of trustees also changed Venu Srinivasan's term from life to three years during a meeting on 11 November. The events signal the consolidation of power by Chairman Noel Tata and the ascent of Neville, 32, who now stands alongside the most important figures in the Tata universe, paving the way for a significant, protracted career at the company that bears his family name.

Neville's Career Graph

Neville joined Trent in 2016 after graduating from Bayes Business School with a degree in business, first working in the packaged goods and beverages division. Later, he became the head of Zudio, a low-cost fashion brand that has grown to be one of India's fastest-growing clothing formats. Additionally, he recently earned an MBA from Singapore's INSEAD Business School.

Neville Tata now serves on the boards of the Tata Social Welfare Trust, the JRD Tata Trust, and the RD Tata Trust. According to officials, he might eventually be admitted to the Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT), which is another important trust that, along with SDTT, owns more than 51% of the stock in Tata Sons, the holding company of the group. The trustees gathered around a cake cut to commemorate Neville's admission at the iconic Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Colaba.

The executive committee, which included the late Ratan Tata, Srinivasan, Vijay Singh, and former trustee Mehli Mistry, has also been dissolved by the trustees. The purpose of the executive committee structure was to speed up decision-making on Trust issues without calling a meeting of all trustees. The CEO of Tata Trusts will now answer directly to chairman Noel Tata following its dissolution.

Bhat's Appointment in Tata Trust

According to various media reports, Bhat's appointment to the Trust's board may be the first of many Tata veterans who are chosen to serve as trustees. In managing the Trusts, Ratan Tata had also depended on veterans like RK Krishna Kumar. Bhat, 71, is a graduate of IIT Madras and IIM Ahmedabad. He started his career in 1978 as a management trainee at Godrej & Boyce before joining the Tata Watch Project, which subsequently changed its name to Titan.

He led Titan to diversify beyond watches into eyewear, jewellery, accessories, fragrances, and sarees during his 17-year term as managing director, which stretched from 2002 to 2019 (Taneira). At the time, it was the second-largest listed company in the group with a market valuation of roughly $13 billion. Changes to important trust regulations had been communicated to trustees prior to the meeting on November 11.

Perpetual trustees are constrained to one-fourth of a trust's board strength by the Maharashtra Public Trusts (Amendment) Ordinance, 2025 (Ord. 7 of 2025), which was announced in September. The implementation of a significant resolution that Tata Trusts voted in October of last year, which stated that trustees would be renewed for life at the conclusion of their terms, was hampered by this.