Over 100 years ago, a merchant set up a mill in Mumbai to manufacture cotton goods and flagged off what was to become the $11 billion Tata Group.
The group observed the death centenary of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, the founder of the group, on May 19, 2004. J N Tata was a great visionary, nationalist and a person who with his determined played an important role in the industrialisation phase of the country.
The group's other best known 'Tata,' Jehangir Rattanji Dadabhoy Tata or 'JRD,' also has his birth centenary in 2004.
Bombay House, situated in the heart of Mumbai city, is the headquarters of the group.
The building itself is a fascinating piece of history. In the early 1900s, a plot of ground was put up by the Bombay Municipality for sale in Bombay and purchased by the Tatas.
George Wittet, who once a consulting architect to the government and who later joined the Tatas as the head of the then Tata Engineering Company Limited, constructed a building that was completed in July 1924. That became the 'Bombay House', the headquarters of the Tata Group.
Bombay House, the headquarters of the Tata Group (1926). | Photograph: The Tata Group.
Also read: We never compromised on ethics: Tata
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