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Jamsetji Nasarwanji Tata

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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JAMSETJI NASARWANJI TATA (1839-1904), Parsee merchant and philanthropist, was born at Nosari, in the state of Baroda, in 1839, and went as a boy to Bombay, where he was educated at the Elphinstone College. In 1858 he entered his father's office, and began a commercial career of the highest eminence, beginning with cotton mills at Bombay and also at Nagpur, and ending with the formation of a company to work the iron ores of the Central Provinces on modern principles. One of his best-known achievements was the lowering of the freights on Indian goods to China and Japan, as the result of a long struggle with the Nippon Yusen Kaisha Co. He also introduced a silk industry after Japanese methods into Mysore, and built the Taj Mahal hotel in Bombay. But his greatest benefaction is the endowment of a research institute at Bangalore. He died at Nauheim, in Germany, on the 19th of May 1904.