We have come a long way from the ‘license raj’ that came post-independence from the raj, but family-owned businesses still dominate the scene, with fresh entrepreneurship mostly confined to services.
JRD Tata with his successor Ratan Tata
The iconic 40-seater Lockheed Martin Constellation took off from Mumbai (then Bombay) airport for London on the sweltering summer afternoon of June 8, 1948, exactly 10 months after India’s independence, with the ‘Maharajas’, ‘Nawabs’ There were 35 people on board. ‘ and JRD Tata. This was India’s first international flight, and it was a proud moment for JRD (Air India was owned by the Tata Group). They built the country’s largest salt-to-steel conglomerate, which touched almost every household in the second most populous country.
When he took over as the chairman of Tata Sons (Holding Company) at the age of 34, there were 14 companies under the umbrella with net worth of $100 million. Half a century later, when he took over the reins of Ratan Tata, the group had a net of 95 companies with $5 billion in assets- and ventured into businesses such as software (TCS), healthcare (Tata Memorial Center of Cancer Research) Was. and treatment) and education (TISS).
Buried in this corporate history lies the story of India…
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