Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata was an Indian pioneer industrialist, who founded the Tata Group, India’s biggest conglomerate company. He established the city of Jamshedpur. He founded what would later become the Tata Group of companies. Jamsetji Tata is regarded as the legendary “Father of Indian Industry
Born into a Parsi family, Jamsetji was the first child and only son of Nusserwanji Tata. After graduating from Elphinstone College, Bombay , in 1858, he joined his father’s export-trading firm and helped establish its branches in Japan, China, Europe, and the United States. In 1868 Jamsetji founded a trading company that later evolved into the Tata Group. In 1872 he focused on cotton manufacturing and subsequently founded mills at Nagpur, Bombay, and Coorla. His enterprises were noted for efficiency, for improved labour-protection policies, and for the introduction of finer grades of fibre. He also planned for the Bombay-area hydroelectric power plants that became the Tata Power company in 1906.

In 1901 Jamsetji began organizing India’s first large-scale ironworks, and six years later these were incorporated as the Tata Iron and Steel Company . Under the direction of his sons, Sir Dorabji Jamsetji Tata and Sir Ratanji Tata , the Tata Iron and Steel Company became the largest privately owned steelmaker in India and the nucleus of a group of companies producing not only textiles, steel, and hydroelectric power but also chemicals, agricultural equipment, trucks, locomotives, and cement. Jamsetji’s other commercial ventures included the Taj Mahal Palace, the first luxury hotel in India. After Jamsetji’s death in 1904, his family retained control of the Tata Group and built it into a global conglomerate that by the early 21st century included more than 100 companies.

A noted philanthropist, Jamsetji established the J.N. Tata Endowment in 1892, which encouraged Indian students to pursue higher education. In 1898 he donated land for a research institute in Bangalore , and his sons ultimately established the Indian Institute of Science there. The Tata family went on to become perhaps the most important private funder of technical education and scientific research in India. “When you have to give the lead in action, in ideas – a lead which does not fit in with the very climate of opinion – that is true courage, physical or mental or spiritual, call it what you like, and it is this type of courage and vision that Jamsetji Tata showed. It is right that we should honour his memory and remember him as one of the big founders of modern India.” —Jawaharlal Nehru