The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was but two years past when Jamsetji joined the small firm that his father, a merchant and banker, ran. Jamsetji's entrepreneurial career began, in the words of JRD Tata, "when the passive despair engendered by colonial rule was at its peak". 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. Those passions would, though, soon take a backseat to what Jamsetji quickly understood was the true calling of life: business. The liberal education he received would fuel in Jamsetji a lifelong admiration for academics and a love of reading. Nusserwanji got him enrolled at Elphinstone College, from where he passed in 1858 as a 'green scholar', the equivalent of today's graduate.
Raised in Navsari, Jamsetji joined his father in Bombay when he was 14. 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. 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. Nothing of Jamsetji's childhood suggested he would create his own destiny. 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. 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. But what made Jamsetji truly unique, the quality that places him in the pantheon of modern India's greatest sons, was his humaneness. These attributes, by themselves, would have been enough to mark him as an extraordinary figure. The nationalist in him believed unwaveringly that the fruits of his business success would enrich a country he cared deeply about. 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.
He was a patriot and a humanist whose ideals and vision shaped an exceptional business conglomerate. Jamsetji Tata was more than just the entrepreneur who helped India take her place in the league of industrialised nations.
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