Jamsetji Tata was an Indian pioneer industrialist who founded the Tata Group, India’s biggest conglomerate company. He even established the city of Jamshedpur.
Here are some interesting facts about Jamsetji Tata:
1. Jamsetji Tata is regarded as the legendary “Father of Indian Industry”.
2. Tata was so influential in the world of industry that Jawaharlal Nehru referred to him as a One-Man Planning Commission.
3. Jamsetji Tata and his family were a part of the minority group of Zoroastrians, or Parsees who came to India from fleeing the persecution of Zoroastrians in Iran.
4. He was born in a respectable but poor family of priests.
5. Unlike other Zoroastrians, Jamsetji Tata had a formal Western education because his parents saw that he was gifted with special mental arithmetic from a young age. However, in order for him to have a more modern education, he was later sent to Bombay.
6. Jamsetji was married to Hirabai Daboo while he was still a student.
7. After graduating from the Elphinstone College in Bombay in 1858, he joined his father’s export-trading firm and mainly helped establish it’s strong branches in Japan, China, Europe and the United States.
8. Tata regularly travelled to China in order to become educated with the trade business in opium, however upon his travels, he began to realise that trade in the cotton industry was booming and there was a chance of making a great profit. This influenced his business career, where he invested the most in cotton mills throughout his lifetime.
9. Tata worked in his father’s company until he was 29.
10. Tata had four goals in life: setting up an iron and steel company, a world-class learning institution, a unique hotel and hydro-electric plant. Only the hotel became a reality during his lifetime.
11. Jamsetji Tata continued to be an important figure in the industrial world even in his later stages of life.
12. Later in his life, Tata became a strong supporter of Swadeshism.
13. Jamsetji Tata and his wife Hirabai’s sons Dorabji Tata and Ratanji Tata succeeded Tata as the chairman of the Tata Group.
14. Tata was on his way to a business trip in Germany in 1900 when he became seriously ill. He died in Bad Nauheim on 19 May 1904 and was buried in the Parsi burial ground in Brookwood Cemetery, Woking, England.
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