According to a Mint investigation of corporate filings over a three-year period, Ratan Tata's personal charitable organization Ratan Tata Endowment Fund (RTEF) received a cash gift, shares, and loan from Tata Group companies through undisclosed transactions. The process began in 2022, when Tata Sons donated ₹45 crore in cash to RTEF, followed by a gift of 1% equity shares of Tata Digital Pvt. Ltd, and extended an unsecured loan to the fund through a group non-banking finance entity to buy shares of Tata Technologies Ltd at a price lower than listing on its public offering. In seven months, RTEF realized a profit of ₹158 crore on sale of some of these shares in July 2024.
The endowment fund is the designated recipient of half of the shares that Ratan Tata owned in Tata Sons. According to Mint, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, who chairs Tata Sons since February 2017, also started chairing the board of RTEF a few months after Ratan Tata's demise. RTEF was set up as a Section 8 company in September 2022 with a two-member board, including former Tata Group executive Raghavan Shastri and another former Trust employee, Burzis Taraporevala. Chandrasekaran took over as the chair of RTEF on 13 February 2025, taking the board to three members.
According to Mint, Tata Sons gave RTEF ₹45 crore in cash in September 2022, which the receiver described as "contribution towards the working capital and other funding requirements." Subsequently, Tata Sons transferred 191.3 million shares of Tata Digital to RTEF in March 2023, representing about 1% stake valued at ₹1.65 per share, amounting to ₹31.57 crore. Based on Tata Digital's reduced valuation of $10.3 billion, the 1% RTEF holding is worth $103 million or ₹986 crore. The Tata Digital shares were transferred after Tata Sons pumped in ₹3,200 crore into the digital unit subscribing to 3.2 billion shares at ₹10 each on 9 March 2023.
As reported by Mint, on 23 October 2023, Tata Capital Housing Finance Ltd provided an unsecured loan of ₹147 crore to RTEF at 10.5% interest rate. RTEF spent ₹146.67 crore to buy 3.65 million shares of Tata Technologies at ₹401.81 each. On 30 November 2023, Tata Technologies went public with a listing price of ₹1,200 a share, netting the endowment fund a near-three times appreciation in a month's time. By the end of July 2024, RTEF sold 2.558 million shares at an average price of ₹1,019 a share, making a ₹158 crore profit on this transaction. The remaining 1.092 million shares are worth over ₹808 crore based on Tuesday's closing price.
According to Mint, RTEF reported ₹164 crore in income in FY25 and has a cumulative income of ₹209.63 crore since its inception in September 2022. Of this cumulative income, 75%, or ₹158 crore, came from the sale of Tata Technologies shares, while another 21.5%, or ₹45 crore, came from Tata Sons. The transactions raise questions about whether RTEF benefited over minority investors in Tata Sons, including the Shapoorji Pallonji Group and Tata Group companies such as Tata Motors Ltd, Tata Power Co. Ltd, and Indian Hotels Co. Ltd. All these transactions were made without any disclosure by Tata Sons, raising concerns among corporate governance experts about the need for separate not-for-profit entities and public disclosure requirements.
