Jamsetji Tata & Tata Steel

ABOUT JAMSETJI TATA:

The Founder of the Tata group began with a textile mill in central India in the 1870s. His vision inspired the steel and power industries in India, set the foundation for technical education, and helped the country leapfrog into the ranks of industrialised nations.

Jamsetji Tata was more than just the entrepreneur who helped India take her place in the league of industrialised nations. He was a patriot and a humanist whose ideals and vision shaped an exceptional business conglomerate.

The industrialist in Jamsetji was a pioneer and a visionary, possessed of a spirit of entrepreneurial adventure and acumen never seen before or since in a native of colonial India. The nationalist in him believed unwaveringly that the fruits of his business success would enrich a country he cared deeply about. These attributes, by themselves, would have been enough to mark him as an extraordinary figure. But what made Jamsetji truly unique, the quality that places him in the pantheon of modern India's greatest sons, was his humaneness.

It is this characteristic from which stemmed Jamsetji's generosity of heart and his compassion for a citizenry labouring under the twin realities of oppressive foreign occupation and overwhelming poverty. The distinctive structure the Tata group came to adopt after Jamsetji's passing, with a huge part of its assets being held by trusts devoted to ploughing money into social-development initiatives, can be traced directly to the empathy embedded in the Founder's philosophy of business.

Nothing of Jamsetji's childhood suggested he would create his own destiny. Born on March 3, 1839, in the sleepy town of Navsari in Gujarat, he 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 the enterprising Nusserwanji broke the mould, becoming the first member of the family to try his hand at business.

Raised in Navsari, Jamsetji joined his father in Bombay when he was 14. Nusserwanji got him enrolled at Elphinstone College, from where he passed in 1858 as a 'green scholar', the equivalent of today's graduate. The liberal education he received would fuel in Jamsetji a lifelong admiration for academics and a love of reading. Those passions would, though, soon take a backseat to what Jamsetji quickly understood was the true calling of life: business.

It was a far-from-opportune time for a young native to take his first, tentative steps into the volatile world that was business in the subcontinent. Jamsetji's entrepreneurial career began, in the words of JRD Tata, "when the passive despair engendered by colonial rule was at its peak". The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was but two years past when Jamsetji joined the small firm that his father, a merchant and banker, ran. He had just turned 20.

Tata steel: 

Tata steel is the company which still manage to stand rising from last 114 years which include 2 world wars, 4 national wars and a recession.

• 1867: JN Tata traveled whole world. Inspired by THOMAS CARLYL, a British historian and Philosopher.
  He said  “The nation which gains control of iron, soon acquire control of gold.”
• 1860: Railway was at peak of its innovation during that time and cost of its expansion was very high.

PROBLEM: Caste iron was use to lay the track which are:

• Costly
• Could not carry lot of loads
• Need lot of maintenance
• Susceptible to rust
• Steel was costly

OPPORTUNITY: Henery Bismer, British engineer invented a method of cost effective and a way to mass production of steel which led industrial revolution in west.

IMPLEMETATION: JN Tata implemented this solution and led revolution in India.

• 1907: Tata steel incorporated.
  
• GREAT DIPPRESSION: 1928-1938
  Ever industry all over the world was facing Labour strike during that period but Tata did not face a single Labour strike.
• BEACUSE: Tata didn't saw their labour as money-making machine. They also put their personal asset and jewels for sale to 
• Kept labours instead of firing them.
• Also included: free medical aids, retired gratuity scheme, maternity benifits, the suraksha scheme.

BUSINESS LESSON: 

• Be a warrior leader and passionate student of their industry.
• Capitalization is a powerful weapon of growth of any nation even during war.
• Good Businessman : Build their fortune.
• Great Businessman : Serve their nation.