On His 184th Birth Anniversary, Let's Look Back At How Jamsetji Tata Founded The Tata Group

Today marks the 184th birth anniversary of Tata group founder Jamsetji Tata.

Known as a pioneer and a visionary, Jamsetji Tata sowed the seeds for Tata group in the year 1868 and went on to remain its chairman till his death in 1904, during which he established the JN Tata Endowment in 1892 for his workers' welfare, and also built the iconic Taj Mahal Hotel in 1903.

Born on March 3, 1839 in the Navsari town in Gujarat, Jamsetji Tata was the first child and only son of Nusserwanji Tata, the scion of a family of Parsee priests. Many generations of the Tatas had joined the priesthood, but Nusserwanji instead went to become the first member of the family to try his hand at business.

Early Years Of Jamsetji Tata

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Raised in Navsari, Jamsetji had joined his father in Bombay when he was just 14 years old. His father Nusserwanji got him enrolled at Elphinstone College, from where he passed in 1858 as a 'green scholar', the equivalent of today's graduate.

While the liberal education he received would fuel in Jamsetji a lifelong admiration for academics and a love of reading,Jamsetji quickly understood what was the true calling of life: business.

Jamsetji's entrepreneurial career began, in the words of JRD Tata, "when the passive despair engendered by colonial rule was at its peak". In 1859, Jamsetji joined the small firm that his father, a merchant and banker, ran. He was just 20 years old back then.

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Sowing The Seeds For Tata Group

In 1868, at the age of 29, Jamsetji Tata, who had by then become wiser through the experience garnered by nine years of working with his father, started a trading company with a capital of Rs 21,000, as mentioned on Tata group website.

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Jamsetji's first expedition to England soon followed, where he learnt about the textile business.

Trusting his belief that there was tremendous scope for Indian companies to make a dent in the prevailing British dominance of the textile industry, Jamsetji acquired a bankrupt oil mill in Chinchpokli, in the industrial heart of Bombay, and renamed the property Alexandra Mill and converted it into a cotton mill.

Two years later, Jamsetji sold the mill for a significant profit to a local cotton merchant. He followed this up with an extended visit to England, and an exhaustive study of the Lancashire cotton trade. Jamsetji believed he could take on and beat the colonial masters at a game they had rigged to their advantage.

The Mills Of Change

Jamsetji figured he could maximise his chances of success if he factored three crucial points into his plans: close proximity to cotton-growing areas, easy access to a railway junction, and plentiful supplies of water and fuel. Nagpur, near the heart of Maharashtra's cotton country, met all these conditions. In 1874, Jamsetji had floated a fresh enterprise, the Central India Spinning, Weaving and Manufacturing Company, with a seed capital of Rs1.5 lakh. As described on Tata group website, three years later, Jamsetji's venture was ready to realise its destiny.

On January 1, 1877, the day Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, the Empress Mills came into existence in Nagpur. At the age of 37, Jamsetji had embarked on the first of his fantastic odysseys.

Most Poignant Period In His Life

It was at Empress Mills that Jamsetji pioneered worker welfare initiatives, unheard of at the time. The period following the establishment of Empress Mills was the most significant of Jamsetji's busy life. In hindsight, it was also the most poignant.

From the year 1880 till his death in 1904, Jamsetji was consumed by what has to be the three great ideas of his life: setting up an iron and steel company, generating hydroelectric power, and creating a world-class educational institution that would tutor Indians in the sciences. None of these would materialise while Jamsetji lived, but the seeds he laid, the work he did and the force of will he displayed in fulfilling this triumvirate of his dreams ensured they would find glorious expression.

Jamsetji's Iron & Steel Idea

The iron and steel idea got sparked when Jamsetji, on a trip to Manchester to check out new machinery for his textile mill, attended a lecture by Thomas Carlyle. By the early 1880s, he had set his heart on building a steel plant that would compare with the best of its kind in the world. This was a gigantic task. The industrial revolution that had transformed Britain and other countries had, by and large, bypassed India.

Officious government policies, the complexities of prospecting in barely accessible areas and sheer bad luck made matters worse. Jamsetji found his path blocked at every other turn by what his biographer, Frank Harris, called "those curious impediments which dog the steps of pioneers who attempt to modernise the East".

The torturous twists and turns the steel project took would have defeated a lesser man, but Jamsetji remained steadfast in his determination to see the venture come to fruition. Along the way he had to suffer the scorn of people such as Sir Frederick Upcott, the chief commissioner of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway, who promised to "eat every pound of steel rail [the Tatas] succeed in making". There is no record of where Sir Frederick was when the first ingot of steel rolled out off the plant's production line in 1912. Jamsetji had been dead eight years by then, but his spirit it was, as much as the efforts of his son Dorab and cousin RD Tata, that made real the seemingly impossible.

Welfare Measures For His Workers

Jamsetji gave a lot of importance to the welfare of his workers. Jamsetji offered his people shorter working hours, well-ventilated workplaces, and provident fund and gratuity long before they became statutory in the West.

He spelt out his concept of a township for the workers at the steel plant in a letter he wrote to Dorab Tata in 1902, five years before even a site for the enterprise had been decided. "Be sure to lay wide streets planted with shady trees, every other of a quick-growing variety," the letter stated. "Be sure that there is plenty of space for lawns and gardens. Reserve large areas for football, hockey and parks. Earmark areas for Hindu temples, Mohammedan mosques and Christian churches." It was only fair that the city born of this sterling vision came to be called Jamshedpur.

His Focus On Philanthrophy

Jamsetji's philanthropic principles were rooted in the belief that for India to climb out of poverty, its finest minds would have to be harnessed.

Charity and handouts were not his way, so Jamsetji established the JN Tata Endowment in 1892. This enabled Indian students, regardless of caste or creed, to pursue higher studies in England. This beginning flowered into the Tata scholarships, which flourished to the extent that by 1924, two out of every five Indians coming into the elite Indian Civil Service were Tata scholars. The objective of creating the Indian Institute of Science came from the same source, but here, as with the steel plant, Jamsetji had to endure long years of heartburn without getting any tangible recompense in his lifetime.

Jamsetji pledged Rs 30 lakh from his personal fortune towards setting up the institute, drew up a blueprint of the shape it ought to take, and solicited the support of everyone from the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, to Swami Vivekananda to turn it into reality. Swami Vivekananda, in his backing of the idea, wrote in 1899, "I am not aware if any project at once so opportune and so far reaching in its beneficent effects has ever been mooted in India... The scheme grasps the vital point of weakness in our national well-being with a clearness of vision and tightness of grip, the mastery of which is only equalled by the munificence of the gift that is being ushered to the public." Despite this and similar endorsements, it would take a further 12 years before the splendid Indian Institute of Science started functioning in Bangalore [now Bengaluru] in 1911.

Building The Taj Mahal Hotel

Of the ventures that did bear fruit while Jamsetji was alive, the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay has to rank highest. Legend has it that Jamsetji set his mind on building Taj Mahal Hotel after being denied entry into one of the city's hotels for being an Indian.

His sons, friends and business associates were sceptical. His sisters chided him by asking, "Are you really going to build a bhatarkhana [eating house]?"

The Taj turned out to be a bit fancier than that. By the time of its completion in 1903, it had cost Rs 4.21 crore. Soaked in luxury, it was the first building in Bombay to use electricity and the first hotel in the country to have American fans, German elevators, Turkish baths, English butlers and whole lot of other innovative delights.

When the Taj Mahal Hotel opened for business in 1903, it was the country's first harbour landmark ¡ª 20 years before the Gateway of India.

Jamsetji's business successes shrouded the assortment of passions and commitments that he carried and nurtured across a fascinating life. He had an abiding love for Bombay, for travel and, most of all, for new ideas. His was a mind constantly seeking knowledge and daring to push the frontiers of achievement, right up to his demise in Germany in 1904.

Indeed, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata's journey shows that he indeed employed the wealth he created to enrich India and her people.

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