Tata family

Prominent Indian business family and philanthropists

Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Group

The Tata family is an Indian business family, based in Mumbai, India. The parent company is Tata Sons, which is the main holding company of the Tata Group. About 65% of the stock in these companies is owned by various Tata family charitable trusts, mainly the Ratan Tata Trust and the Dorab Tata Trust. Approximately 18% of the shares are held by the Pallonji Mistry family, and the rest by various Tata sons.

The Tatas are a Parsi family and originally came to Mumbai from Surat in the state of Gujarat. The founder of the family's fortune was Jamshetji Tata.^[1]

Prominent members

• Jamsetji Tata (3 March 1839 – 19 May 1904), known as one of the fathers of Indian industry.^[2] He and his wife Hirabai née Daboo were the parents of a daughter and two sons, being:
  • Dhunbai Tata, daughter of Jamsetji and Hirabai Tata. Unwed.
  • Dorabji Tata (27 August 1859 – 3 June 1932), elder son of Jamsetji, Indian industrialist, philanthropist and 2nd Chairman of Tata Group. His wife, Meherbai Tata, was the maternal aunt of nuclear scientist Homi J. Bhabha. The couple did not have children.
  • Ratanji Tata (20 January 1871 – 5 September 1918), younger son of Jamsetji, philanthropist and pioneer of poverty studies. The couple did not have children. After Ratanji Tata died, his wife, Navajbai Tata, adopted an orphan, Naval, who was the grand-nephew of her mother-in-law, and raised him as her own son. Incidentally, Naval was a Tata by birth, since he was born into a very distant branch of the same broader Tata family to which Jamsetji belonged.
    • Naval Tata, (30 August 1904 – 5 May 1989) adopted son of Navajbai Tata. His biological maternal grandmother, Cooverbai Rao née Daboo, had been the sister of Hirabai Tata née Daboo, wife of Tata group founder Jamsetji Tata. Cooverbai Rao's daughter, Ratanbai née Rao, had married Hormusji Tata, who belonged to a distant branch of the broader Tata family. Their son Naval therefore carried the surname "Tata" by birthright. Following the early death of Hormusji, that family had fallen into poverty, and Ratanbai had briefly placed Naval in a Parsi orphanage. When the childless Navajbai Tata discovered that her husband's relatives were living in such poverty, she hastened to help them. She then became fond of the child Naval and, with Ratanbai's consent, she adopted him.^[3] Naval Tata served as Director in several Tata companies, was a member of the ILO, and a recipient of Padma Bhushan. He married twice and had three sons.
    • Sooni née Commissariat, first wife of Naval Tata. Born into a Parsi family, she married Naval Tata with the approval of both his families (birth and adoptive). She bore Naval two sons, Ratan Tata and the reclusive Jimmy Tata, but the marriage was intensely unhappy and ended in divorce. The fact that none of her children ever married is attributed to the unhappiness they witnessed as children. As early as 1951, she married Jamsetji Jeejeebhoy, 6th Baronet.
    • Simone Tata née Dunoyer (born 1930), second wife of Naval Tata. A French-speaking Swiss woman and a Catholic, she was twenty-six years younger than Naval Tata. She married him in 1955 and moved to Mumbai. She and Naval have one son, Noel Tata (b. 1957). She ran Lakme cosmetics and served as chairperson of Trent (Westside).^[4]
      • Ratan Tata, 5th Chairman of the Tata Group, son of Naval Tata by his first wife Sooni Commissariat.
      • Jimmy Tata, son of Naval Tata by his first wife Sooni Commissariat.
      • Noel Tata, chairperson of Trent, son of Naval Tata by his second wife Simone.
• Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata (1856–1926), one of the early stalwarts to serve the Tata Group. His father Dadabhoy and Jeevanbai - mother of Jamsetji Tata, were siblings. Ratanji was also a paternal cousin of Jamsetji and belonged to the broader Tata family. He married Suzanne Brière, a French Catholic, and had five children, including:
  • J. R. D. Tata (29 July 1904 – 29 November 1993), son of Ratanji Tata by his wife Suzanne. As 4th Chairman of Tata Group, he pioneered Indian aviation and founded Tata Airlines (later known as Air India).
  • Sylla Tata, daughter of Ratanji Dadabhoy and elder sister of J.R.D. She was married to Sir Dinshaw Maneckji Petit, 3rd Baronet, who himself was the brother-in-law of Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

References

1. "JRD's first proposal at work: a postal air service". www.thehindubusinessline.com. 5 October 2021. Archived from the original on 12 September 2022. Retrieved 12 September 2022.
2. "Forbes India Magazine - Tata Sons: Passing the Baton". forbesindia.com. Archived from the original on 4 September 2019. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
3. Malik, Amil (30 November 2016). "Who is Ratan Tata and how 'real' a Tata is he?". Mosaic Media Ventures Pvt. Ltd. VC Circle. Archived from the original on 1 April 2020. Retrieved 20 September 2018.
4. "Noel Tata takes over as chairman of Trent". Times of India. Archived from the original on 1 April 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2015.

Bibliography

• "Tata family tree". At Tata Central Archives.
• "Tata family". Encyclopædia Britannica.

External links

• Tata family tree, Economic times
• The most successful Tata Archived 21 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine Viral Panda