Jamsetji Tata

Jamsetji Tata was an Indian industrialist and philanthropist who founded what became the Tata Group, beginning with a trading firm and a textile mill, the Central India Spinning, Weaving and Manufacturing Company, established in 1877, at a time when large-scale modern industry in India was almost entirely controlled by British interests. He spent much of his later career pursuing three major projects he did not live to see completed: a modern iron and steel plant, a hydroelectric power scheme, and a world-class scientific research institute in India, all of which he regarded as essential to the country's industrial and technological self-sufficiency. Following his death in 1904, his successors carried each of these visions to completion, founding Tata Steel in 1907, developing major hydroelectric projects in western India, and establishing the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 1909 using an endowment he had set up in 1898. Widely honored in India as "the Father of Indian Industry," Jamsetji Tata is credited with laying the institutional foundations for large-scale modern industry, engineering education and applied scientific research in India.