JRD Tata: Biography

JRD (Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy) Tata was born on 29 July 1904 in Paris, France. He was the pioneer of the Tata Industry in modern times and today, we celebrate his 114th birth anniversary.

His area of development for the Indian economy was in the creation of India’s first airline service (which later became Air India), leading to the rapid expansion of the Tata Group.

Hailing from a Parsi family but being born to a French mother, he spent most of his childhood in France and even had French as his first language. His interest in aviation was kindled by his interaction with the aviation pioneer Louis Blériot. He studied in France, Japan and England, served in the French army for a year, and when he decided to study engineering at the University of Cambridge, he was called back to India to partake his role in the Tata family business established by his great-grandfather, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata.

His father, Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata, had died a year after his coming to India. He had to then take his father’s place as the director of Tata Sons, a flagship company of the group. He surrendered his French citizenship in1929, became the first Indian to gain a commercial pilot license that year and in 1932 he established the Tata Air Mail, a courier service which operated in Karachi, Ahmadabad, Bombay and Madras.

He became chairman at an early age of 34, and he then made his courier service to Tata Airlines, the first domestic carrier in India. We today know this airline as Air India, whose name was changed to this in 1946 and was nationalized (with JRD Tata as chairman till 1978 when he retired), in 1953.

During his reign of half a century, JRD Tata contributed excessively to the development of his company and of India as a whole. He served as a trustee of the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust from 1932 and helped establish the Tata Memorial Centre for Cancer, Research and Treatment in 1941. He founded Tata Motors in 1945, as a joint venture with Daimler-Benz of Germany which began with commercial vehicles.

He was not only a progressive businessman but also looked after the rights of his workers. He initiated a program in 1956 to give his workers a stronger voice about the workings of the company, good working conditions, free medical aid and accidental compensation. He founded the Tata Tea Limited in 1964, Tata Consultancy Services in 1968 and Titan Industries in 1987. The Tata Empire generated approximately 4 billion dollars annually.