Tata, the Indian conglomerate that owns Jaguar Land Rover and Corus, has begun a global search for a successor to Ratan Tata, the chairman of the sprawling conglomerate.

“We have some outside consultants and a formal search process is on. There are no constraints,” Mr Tata, 71, who has led the group for nearly two decades, said. He said that the new boss could come from within the 141-year-old business empire, which has interests in sectors ranging from IT to tea, or externally.

All but one of the previous chairmen have been from the founding Tata family, but no family candidate has come to the fore this time.

Mr Tata is the great grandson of Jamsetji Tata, the group founder. He has held the position since 1991, the year in which India’s economy was liberated from the “license Raj”, a move that heralded a period of rapid growth for India and Tata.

His tenure was marked initially by his ushering out of the group’s old guard. Then Mr Tata embarked on an ambitious international expansion, which has included the acquisition of two icons of British business. In 2007, Tata Steel paid $13 billion to buy Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel maker. A year later Tata Motors spent $2.3 billion to acquire Jaguar Land Rover.

“It would certainly be easier if [my successor] were an Indian national, but now that 65 per cent of our revenues come from overseas, it could also be an expatriate sitting in that position with justification now,” Mr Tata said. Probably the most respected corporate chieftain in India, Mr Tata, an urbane and introverted bachelor who lives in south Mumbai, is expected to step down by 2012. The retirement age for non-executive directors at Tata Sons, the group holding company, was raised from 70 to 75 in 2006, largely because of the absence of a natural successor.

Whoever is chosen to succeed him will oversee Tata’s 98 operating companies, which have annual revenues of $71 billion (£42 billion) and 357,000 employees. The group runs India’s largest maker of lorries, the country’s biggest IT outsourcer and the world’s eighth-largest steelmaker by output. Yet the past two years have been among the rockiest in its history. Mr Tata, who chairs several Tata companies, including Tata Steel and Tata Motors, has admitted that his British acquisitions have been difficult to digest in the wake of the global credit crisis amid plummeting demand for raw materials and luxury cars.

However, he said he still believed in the rationale behind them: “If we assume that the global meltdown is a phenomenon that will be over in the near term, I think we will look back and say that these are very strategic and worthwhile acquisitions,” he said.

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