J. R. D. Tata

This is reminding me of, I think...

Was it JRD Tata who said this? I think in response to Nehru or something.

Something around profit being a dirty word.

Obviously, the whole debate around that.

And I didn't know he was actually drafted into the French army for a year before his father asked him to come back to Bombay.

JRD Tata expanded the Tata Group significantly.

He took it into chemicals, into automobile manufacturing and he expanded further on the scientific and engineering side.

He was also India's first commercial pilot.

One of the scientists at TIFR is Abdul Kalam who eventually goes on to become the President of India.

In 1956,

JRD Tata sets up the Tata Administrative Services or TAS because the Tata group would need managers and administrators and not just scientists and engineers as well.

In 1951, when the first IIT, IIT Kharagpur is opened, a young Punjabi, 27-year-old Punjabi comes back to India from the US after degrees from Canada and the US MIT.

Pertinently also.

The Tata group has weathered serious governance storms, manner in which they sacked Cyrus Mistry, all kinds of other things, radio tapes, things in the past, only because of a pristine reputation built over the decades, over the decades from the days of Jamshedji Tata and JRD Tata.

All the problems during Ratan Tata's time were glossed over because here was a Tata in sole charge with, again, a great public reputation.

And the group continued to enjoy not only this blue chip reputation, but special privileges that are available to no other business group.