Top5 Amazing Facts Of TATA Group That Make It Successful Worldwide

If you live in India, you must have see or use across someone product of Tata Group of Companies. You must think that the success of Tata Group has come from the courage and vision of Ratan Tata. Yes, his contribution is definitely there. But the links of success of this group which we see today go back 150 years. In today’s article, we will open this story and know how a visionary made his dreams come true and created Tata Group.

5) TATA Products

TATA Group’s products are exported to more than 150 countries. While Tata Group manages its services in more than 100 countries itself. According to the estimates of 2024, the capital of Tata Group is 403 billion dollars. Be it cars or jewelry, salt or tea leaves, from airline industry to real estate service, Tata Group has its feet in more than 24 products or services.

If you look at the vehicles running on the roads, you see Tata Motors. If you look at the planes flying in the air, you see Air India. India’s iconic Taj Hotel is famous all over the world. It is owned by the Tata Group. From power to fashion and from tea to salt, the Tata Group of Companies rules everywhere. There are more than 100 small and big companies in the whole of India which come under the Tata Group.

4) Jamshedji Tata

This journey of success was started 156 years ago by not Ratan Tata’s grandfather but great grandfather Jamshedji Tata. Jamshedji used to trade cotton with his father. When he was 29 years old, he laid the foundation of his own trading company in 1868. The cotton he sold was mostly exported and some textile mills bought it and sold it in the form of cloth. In this way, Jamshed ji got the idea that along with selling cotton, he should also set up a textile mill.

A lot of investment was needed to set up a mill and investing so much money in a new business was quite risky. At that time, an oil mill in Chinch Pokli was incurring huge losses and ultimately the bank had collapsed. Jamshed ji bought that oil mill at a low price and converted it into a cotton mill and started running it. That mill was named Alexandria. But after two years, he sold the mill at a profit instead of making a loss and collected enough money to set up a new manufacturing plant.

At that time, Bombay was the hub of the cotton market. It was also called the Cottonopolis of India. Jamshed ji himself belonged to Bombay. But despite this, he established his new cotton mill in Nagpur, 770 km away from Bombay. This new mill was named Empress Mill. On which the people of Bombay taunted him a lot for setting up a mill so far away from the cotton market. No one could understand that when Bombay is the hub of the cotton market, why did Jamshed ji establish a mill in Nagpur. But time proved that this decision of Jamshed ji was very good.

Raw material i.e. cotton crops were mostly grown near Nagpur. Due to which there was no problem of supply of raw material. A lot of water is needed during the process of making cotton cloth and Nagpur has many rivers and lakes due to which there was no problem of water supply. In cities like Bombay, the demand for laborers was high, due to which there was often a shortage of laborers there. Due to high unemployment in Nagpur, the rates of laborers here were very low and availability was high.

Now because there was no cotton mill in Nagpur earlier. Due to this reason, the laborers there were not very trained. There was a need to work very hard on them. Jamshed ji saw that the workers did not pay much attention to work and took leave. This thing used to bother Jamshed ji a lot. But to solve this problem, 150 years ago, he adopted a method which seems difficult to imagine even in today’s modern era. Instead of scolding the workers or cutting their salaries, he decided to give them more facilities.

Jamshed ji introduced such a scheme that all the workers of his factories will also get pension after retirement. They were also given medical insurance and sports days and family days were also kept for their entertainment. The workers who performed better were also given rewards in front of everyone. That is, all this is understandable in today’s era. But in those times, doing this was no less than a dream and the interesting thing is that his scheme also worked and the workers started feeling valued. They started working by considering the company as their own company.

Jamshed ji believed that to make India strong, it is very important that everything is manufactured in India. With this mission, he kept trying. He started setting up Majeed Companies. At that time, silk was considered a very premium fabric. At that time, the highest class silk was imported from France. French silk worms were known to produce the best silk in the whole world. Jamshed ji went to France and brought the breed of French silk worms to India from there.

Now the problem was that silk worms were capable of giving good production only in the climate of Europe. It was very difficult for them to survive in India. So he established a silk firm in Bangalore. Where the climate was quite good for silk worms but not perfect. In the beginning, he had to face a lot of difficulties. Because French silk worms often got diseases. To fix these issues, Jamshed ji came up with the concept of farming silkworms in a controlled environment for the first time.

Luckily, his experiment worked and thus Jamshed ji made India capable of producing the best silk in the form of Tata Silk. Today India is one of the largest silk producers in the world. Apart from fabrics, he wanted to expand his network even further. He wanted that all the things used in India should be manufactured completely in India. He had a total of four dreams – manufacturing of iron and steel, hotels, education and hydroelectric plants. But the only dream he could see fulfilled was the Taj Mahal Hotel, which was completed in 1903.

When the Taj Mahal Hotel was first opened, it was the first hotel in India to have an electricity connection. Apart from this, American fans, German elevators and Turkish baths were also installed in it. Initially, the rent of the rooms of Taj Mahal Hotel used to be only ₹ 13. Which also included attached bathroom. Taj Mahal Hotel was designed in such a way that the view of the sea was visible from every room in such a way that it seemed as if the hotel was floating on the sea. What was the reason behind opening the Taj Mahal Hotel? Many stories are famous about this.

It is said that once Jamshed ji did not get permission to go to the famous Watsons Hotel of Bombay, which is also called Esplanade Mansions today. Because it was built only for the British. For this reason he decided to build the Taj Mahal Hotel. But this story was declared false by a writer named Charles Allen and wrote that Jamshed ji could not take such a small thing to heart. Rather, he was very fond of his city Bombay and he wanted to give a gift to his home town.

At that time, the British were rapidly laying railway network all over India. In which thousands of tones of iron was imported from Britain. Jamshed ji’s dream was to manufacture steel in India itself. Due to this, he started searching for iron reserves to make steel all over India. This search continued for 17 years and finally iron reserves were found in Bengal. The steel plant was inaugurated in 1899. But unfortunately Jamshed ji was not destined to see steel being made. Jamshed ji died in 1904.

3) Dorabji Tata

After the death of Jamshed ji, his son Dorabji Tata took forward Jamshed ji’s mission and established Iron and Steel Company in 1907. Which is known today as Tata Steel. This was the first steel plant in Asia. In World War 1, the British fulfilled their demand for steel through this plant. Under the leadership of Dorabji Tata, Tata Group started growing rapidly. In 1910, the first hydro electric company in India was established in the name of Tata Power. Where electricity started being generated with the help of natural waterfalls and artificial lakes and electricity was started to be supplied to many big industries from this power plant.

At that time science was progressing all over the world and Tata Group did not want to see India lagging behind in any way. That is why they laid the foundation of Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. So that the world can be competed in the field of science and research. This institute also helped India a lot in making its first computer and first aircraft. Tata Group was not progressing on its own. Rather, it was bringing such facilities for the workers which no other company in the world was adopting.

Workers’ shifts were limited to 8 hours. So that they get free early and go back home and spend time with their families. Today, this policy of Tata which was introduced 100 years ago is working all over the world. Here, Dorabji Tata’s life also came to a full stop and he died in 1932. But in these 28 years, he had blessed Tata Group with steel, power, science and many other things.

2) J. R. D. Tata

After Dorabji Tata, the responsibilities of Tata Group came into the hands of one of his family members J. R. D. Tata. J. R. D. Tata had experience in aviation. That is why as soon as he took control, he decided that he would give India its own airline. J. R. D. Tata laid the foundation of Tata Airlines. Which was no less than a revolution. India had got its own airline. Whose first flight was flown by J. R. D. Tata himself as a pilot and he also earned the title of being India’s first commercial pilot.

After independence in 1947, the Indian government took control of many industries in India. Tata Airlines was also included in it and its name was changed to Air India. Now it was the turn of the chemical industry. J. R. D. Tata realized that chemical industries are present in India but to complete their work, most of the important chemicals have to be imported from other countries. For example, caustic soda and soda ash were needed to make products like glass, soap and surf. But these chemicals were not produced in India. They were imported from other countries.

In 1939, a company named Tata Chemicals was opened. Which produced all the chemicals for India. This company helped India grow in fertilizer and other sectors. After that, once again J. R. D. Tata turned to transportation. He started a company that made trucks and engines, which we know today as Tata Motors. Tata Motors makes many models of cars, trucks and other vehicles. Tata Motors is still a big name in India’s motor industry and vehicles are also sent to South Africa from here.

After that, in 1960, when the world started moving towards computers and technology, Tata Group was also not behind. He created India’s first software and IT company TCS i.e. Tata Consultancy Service. In 1984, J. R. D. Tata realized that people in India drink tea very fondly. That is why Tata Group also took steps to meet the demand of tea. Tata Group started a company named Tata Tea and that company is still a big name in the world’s tea manufacturing companies.

1) Ratan Tata

J. R. D. Tata had grown old now, that is why he called one of his family members from USA to India in his lifetime to take command of the business. That family member was none other than Ratan Tata. Initially, Ratan Tata was given responsibilities only in Tata Steel and he took Tata Steel out of loss and brought it to profit. J. R. D. Tata was very impressed by this and that is why he made Ratan Tata the chairman of Tata Group in 1991. Ratan Tata was a man of the modern era. That is why he wanted to use technology in everything.

As soon as he became the chairman, he thought that Tata Motors has been making cars and trucks but even today there is not a single vehicle whose complete manufacturing is done in India. This meant that some parts had to be imported from abroad. That is why Tata Motors set up a new car manufacturing plant and India’s first car Indica was launched in 1998. TCS, which earlier used to do only basic data entry and management, was shifted to software development and brought it to the list of the world’s leading software companies.

Under Ratan Tata, Tata Group started buying world-famous brands. Tata Group acquired the then famous tea company Tetley Tea. Tata Steel acquired Corus Group and Tata Motors acquired big companies like Jaguar and Land Rover. Tata Group is progressing rapidly even today.