Question

Trace the establishment rise and growth of TISCO till independence

Answer 1

Tata Iron & Steel Company Ltd. (TISCO) is the iron and steel production company associated with the Tata group of some 80 different industrial and other business enterprises in India, founded by members of the Tata family. TISCO operates as India's largest integrated steel works in the private sector with a market share of nearly 13 percent and is the second largest steel company in the entire industry. Its products and services include hot and cold rolled coils and sheets, tubes, construction bars, forging quality steel, rods, structurals, strips and bearings, steel plant and material handling equipment, ferro alloys and other minerals, software for process controls, and cargo handling services. Through its subsidiaries, TISCO also offers tinplate, wires, rolls, refractories, and project management services.

Tata's Early Beginnings in the 1800s

The story of TISCO is the story of one family or, more accurately, one man whose vision and determination to give India a modern industrial economy helped provide a platform for the country's independence half a century after his death. At the same time, he helped create what was by 1970 India's biggest nonpublic enterprise. Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata was born into a well-to-do family of Bombay Parsees in 1839. The Parsees, a religious minority group, had carved a niche for themselves in business, in this case in the economy of Victorian India, which was dominated by British interests and was being developed as a client imperial economy. Tata's father was a successful merchant with interests in the cotton trade to Britain. Tata joined the family business after an education at Elphinstone College in Bombay and was sent to Lancashire, England, in 1864 to represent the firm there. This was to be the first of many travels in Europe, North America, and the Far and Middle East during which he formulated his ideas on the best strategy to realize his own ambitions for success in business and to contribute to the economic development of India.

Tata's own background was in cotton production. He believed that mills could function successfully in India in close proximity to the cotton-producing areas in the west of the country, thereby putting them in a strong position to undercut their Lancashire competitors. He obtained air conditioning equipment from suppliers in the United States and the latest cotton spinning machinery installed to provide the optimum climatic conditions for spinning. His early ventures showed promise and in 1874 he founded his first company, the Central India Spinning, Weaving and Manufacturing Company. Three years later, on the same day that Queen Victoria was declared empress of India, he opened the Empress mill in Nagpur.

As Tata was taking his first steps toward establishing a viable cotton spinning business, Indian nationalismalso was beginning to find a focus for its aspirations through the Indian National Congress. Tata was present at its inaugural meeting and his devotion to the cause of an independent India was undoubtedly a motivating factor in his own drive for success in business. Cotton was only a start. From his travels in other industrialized nations he had come to identify three essential elements for a modern industrial economy: steel production, hydroelectric power, and technical education. Although he did not live to see any of his schemes in these areas come to fruition, he laid the foundations on which his sons, and then later generations of his family, were able to build to realize his ambitions.