Sir Dorabji Tata

Sir Dorabji Tata (27 August 1859 – 3 June 1932) was son of J.N.Tata and he played an important part in the development of the Tata Group. 

J.N. Tata was committed to four goals: setting up an iron and steel company, a world-class learning institution, a unique hotel and a hydro-electric plant. Only the hotel became a reality during his lifetime, with the inauguration of the Taj Mahal Hotel at Colaba waterfront in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 3 December 1903. It was set at the cost of 42 million rupees. Jamsetji Tata died on 19 May 1904. Sir Dorabji Tata, Eldest son of Jamsetji had pursued his fathers dreams and wishes.

Dorab Tata was the elder son of Hirabai and Parsi Zoroastrian Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata. He received his primary education at the Proprietary High School in Bombay. He went  to England in 1875, where he was privately tutored initially. He entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1877 and was educated there for two years. He returned to Bombay in 1879. He continued his studies at St. Xavier's College, Bombay, and obtained a degree in 1882.

Dorab worked for two years as a journalist at the Bombay Gazette. In 1884, he joined the cotton business division of his father's firm. 

Dorabji was intimately involved in the fulfillment of his father's ideas of a modern iron and steel industry, and agreed to the necessity for hydroelectric electricity to power the industry. Dorab is credited with the establishment of the conglomerates Tata Steel in 1907 and Tata Power in 1911, which are the core of the present-day Tata Group. Dorabji is known to have personally accompanied the mineralogists who were searching for iron fields.  Under Dorabji's management, the business of Tata Group that had once included three cotton mills and the Taj Hotel Bombay grew to include India's largest private sector steel company, three electric companies and one of India’s leading insurance companies. Founder of New India Assurance Co Ltd. in 1919, the largest General Insurance company in India. Dorabji Tata was knighted in January 1910 by Edward VII, becoming Sir Dorabji Tata.

On March 11, 1932, he established a trust fund which was to be used "without any distinction of place, nationality or creed," for the advancement of learning and research, disaster relief, and other philanthropic purposes. That trust is today known as the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust. Dorabji additionally provided the seed money to fund the setting up of India's premier scientific and engineering research institution, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Dorabji died in Bad Kissingen, Germany on June 3, 1932, at the age of 73. He had no children.

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