Mehli Mistry resigns from Ratan Tata's family office
Mehli Mistry has resigned from the board of RNT Associates, Ratan Tata's family investment office, months after being ousted from Tata Trusts. The exit deepens his separation from the Tata Group even as he contests his Trusts removal before Maharashtra's charity commissioner.
The late Ratan Tata’s confidant Mehli Mistry has resigned from the board of RNT Associates Pvt Ltd, a little over three years after joining the family office's board, which counts the Tatas’ two sisters as members.
Mehli Mistry's resignation from RNT Associates follows his ouster from the Tata Trusts, the philanthropic entities that own Tata Sons, the Group's holding company, in November 2025, and marks his continued stepping away from the Group and its related entities.
“Owing to my preoccupation with my other commitments, I hereby submit my resignation from the position of director of RNT Associates Pvt. Ltd, effective i.e. 1 July 2026,” Mistry wrote to the board of directors of RNT Associates in a letter dated 30 June.
Mistry is now a board member of Tata Education and Development Trust, the wealthiest affiliate of Tata Trusts.
Sisters of Ratan Tata, Shireen Jejeebhoy and Deanna Jejeebhoy, Jamsheed Poncha, a senior executive at Tata Sons and and Tata Sons General Counsel Sidharth Sharma are the four board members of RNT Associates.
RNT Associates, established in March 2009, was the investment vehicle used by Ratan Tata to invest in start-ups. The investment vehicle has small investments in close to two dozen startups, including mobile payments group Paytm, ride-hailing firm Ola and online gold jeweller BlueStone.
RNT Associates makes money through dividends and through providing consultancy services. In the year ended March 2023, the last available financials Mint reviewed, dividend income accounted for about half of the ₹36 crore in revenue at RNT Associates.
Ratan Tata and another of his trusted lieutenants, late R. K. Krishna Kumar, were the two principal shareholders of RNT Associates. In 2022, before Ratan Tata’s demise in October 2024, the industrialist had established the Ratan Tata Endowment Foundation (RTEF) and the Ratan Tata Endowment Trust (RTET) as the two shareholders of RNT Associates.
RTEF counts Tata Sons chair Natarajan Chandrasekaran, a former Tata Group executive Raghavan Shastri and another former Group employee Burzis Taraporevala as board members. RTET counts Tata Trusts Chair Noel Tata, Shireen and Deanna, former Citibank India employee Pramit Jhaveri, and Shastri and RNT Associates’ Poncha as trustees.
An email sent to Tata Sons seeking a comment from General Counsel Sharma went unanswered.
Mistry, who was brought into the board of RNT Associates in March 2023, has seen his engagement with the Tata Group end, after differences with Tata trustees led to his ouster from the two principal Tata Trusts. Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and Sir Ratan Tata Trust own 27.98% and 23.56%, respectively, of Tata Sons, while the other smaller trusts own 14.4%, giving these philanthropic entities a majority ownership of 65.9% in the holding company of the diversified Tata Group. The remaining stakes are owned by the Shapoorji Pallonji Group (18.38%), nine Tata Group companies (12.86%), and seven individuals (2.87%).
After his term was not renewed, Mistry challenged the decision of other Trustees, including chair Noel Tata and the two vice chairmen, Venu Srinivasan and Vijay Singh, on how they voted against this candidature at the philanthropic entities, before the Maharashtra charity commissioner. Mistry maintains that he does not seek reinstatement with the Tata Trusts and is only filing these affidavits to expose what he believes were wrongdoings at the philanthropic entities, which, when brought to light, led to his ouster.
About the Authors
Varun Sood has been a business journalist writing on corporate affairs for the past 17 years. He currently oversees corporate coverage, including information technology (IT) services, aviation, auto, metals and mining, and conglomerates at Mint. He started as a reporter at Business Standard in 2005, after a short internship at the Economic and Political Weekly. Having worked across newsrooms in Delhi and Mumbai, including at DNA, the Financial Times, and the Economic Times, he is now based in Bengaluru. He is most proud of his work over the last decade at Mint, including writing about the rise and fall of some CEOs at Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, and Wipro. His first book, “Azim Premji: The Man Beyond the Billions”, was published by HarperCollins in October 2020. These days, he is spending more time reading annual reports and analysts' transcripts. Varun’s two pet peeves are access journalism and the dying art of interviews with business leaders. If you think there is something wrong inside your company or there are problems with corporate governance that you'd like to highlight, email him at varun.sood@livemint.com.
Satish John serves as the Managing Editor at Mint, bringing over 30 years of experience in business journalism. He began his career in 1996 as a reporter at the Telegraph after a brief stint in the corporate sector. During his three decades of journalism, Satish has written on almost all sectors, including conglomerates, power, metals and mining, aviation and auto. Before joining Mint in 2022 (this is his second stint with the paper after earlier working from 2008 to 2011), Satish worked at The Economic Times and DNA. At Mint, Satish oversees the corporate, banking and markets coverage. One of his key roles is to manage news reporting teams and ensure their coordination across cities. The other important role he plays is in helping the paper get big news scoops and stories. His colleagues say he is a great raconteur and always has some interesting stories about promoters and companies. These days, Satish is exploring podcasts and AI tools to better tell stories and reach a wider audience. Inside the newsroom, reporters and editors continue to ideate with Satish to better their stories.
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