Tatas: How a family built a business and a nation

WINNER OF THE GAJA CAPITAL BUSINESS BOOK PRIZE | The nineteenth century was an exciting time of initiative and enterprise around the world. If John D. Rockefeller was creating unimagined wealth in the US that he would put to the service of the nation, a Parsi family with humble roots was doing the same in India. In 1822, a boy was born in a priestly household in Gujarat's Navsari. Young Nusserwanji knew early on that his destiny lay beyond his village and decided to head for Bombay to start a business. What Nusserwanji started as a cotton trading venture, his son Jamsetji, born in the same year as Rockefeller, grew into a multifaceted business, turning around sick textile mills, setting up an iron and steel company, envisioning a cutting-edge institute of higher learning, building a world-class hotel. Stewarded ably over the decades by Jamsetji's sons Dorabji and Ratanji, the larger-than-life JRD, and thereafter the more business-like Ratan, the Tata group is a 110-billion-dollar empire. The Tatas is their story.