Ranchi: 119th birth anniversary of Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhai (JRD) Tata celebrated on Saturday.
JRD’s foresight can be gauged from the fact that he played a major role in making the first computer in the country.
He broke with the tradition of expanding the Tata Empire and involving professionals in the business, which is today a brand for the world.
TCS (Tata Computer Centre) is a great example of JRD’s visionary thinking.
It is the most profitable company of Aad Tata Group.
JRD was the father of the Indian Aviation Industry.
It was he who founded Air India.
JRD was the chairman of the Tata Group for a long time.
He was the founder of many reputed companies.
In 1938, JRD Tata was promoted to the top position in the group.
At that time he was the youngest member on the board of directors of Tata Sons.
Led Tata Steel as the Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1939 to 1984.
In the next 50 years of his leadership, the Tata Group expanded into the chemical, automobile, FMCG and IT sectors.
Breaking the Indian business practice by his own family members, he insisted on bringing professionals in the companies.
JRD was a visionary.
He also immediately recognized the importance of computers.
It was also related to his collaboration with the country’s leading nuclear physicist Dr. Homi Bhabha, who built India’s first computer at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
The then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru named this computer TIFRAC (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Atomic Calculator).
The first computers in India were huge in size, occupying an entire room.
By the late 1960s, Tata Sons had opened its own software division under JRD, a decade before the rest of the country became computer-conscious.
Many companies of his group used to run in Jamshedpur, in which Telco and TISCO were prominent. People from all over the country used to come to work in these companies.
Even then, working in Tata group companies was a matter of great pride.
JRD established his milestones, among them the establishment of TCS was a historic achievement.
This was in the late 1960s when computers were viewed with suspicion.
One of the earliest TCS contracts was the introduction of a punch-card service for Tata Steel employees.
Taking forward JRD Tata’s future-centric vision, Tata Steel continues to be at the forefront of technology adoption and investment by continuously adopting new technologies that play a vital role in enhancing business value.
The company has implemented an Enterprise Resource Planning platform, which has turned out to be one of the largest such migrations in Asia.