Book excerpt: | LONGLISTED FOR THE TATA LITERATURE LIVE BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2019 | | LONGLISTED FOR THE TATA LITERATURE LIVE BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2019 |Immediately upon completing his DPhil degree, young Mukund Rajan came back to India and joined the Tata group as Ratan Tata's executive assistant. Over the next twenty-three years, as he worked closely with Ratan Tata, he got an inside view of the ups and downs, the controversies and achievements of the Tata group. In this book, his memoirs, he talks of what really went on during those turbulent times and how the Tatas pulled through each of these situations. Along with that, this book offers a close portrait of the enigmatic Ratan Tata from his longest-serving executive assistant. The Brand Custodian is a study of the Tata group's evolution and explains the relevance of the conglomerate to the world we live in.