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{{Infobox officeholder<br />
| honorific_prefix = '''[[Sir]]'''<br />
| name = Dorabji Tata<br />
| image = Dorabji_Tata (cropped).jpg<br />
| image_size = <br />
| caption = Dorab Tata<br />
| office = 1st [[Indian Olympic Association|President of Indian Olympic Association]]<br />
| term_start = 1927<br />
| term_end = 1928<br />
| predecessor = ''Position established''<br />
| successor = Maharaja [[Bhupinder Singh of Patiala]]<br />
| birth_date = {{Birth date|df=yes|1859|8|27}}<br />
<!-- Do not add flag icons to place of birth/death, per [[WP:FLAG]] -->| birth_place = [[Bombay]], [[Bombay Presidency]], [[British India]]<br />
| death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1932|6|3|1859|9|27}}<br />
| death_place = [[Bad Kissingen]], Germany<br />
| religion = [[Zoroastrian]]<br />
| occupation = Entrepreneur<br />
| parents = Hirabai and [[Jamshedji Tata]]<br />
| alma_mater = [[Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge|Cambridge University]]<br />[[University of Bombay]]<br />
| spouse = Meherbai Bhabha<br />
| relatives = See [[Tata family]]<br />
| networth = £4 million (1930)<br />
| known_for = {{nowrap|Founder of [[Tata Steel]]<br /> Founder of [[Tata Power]]<br /> Founder of [[Tata Chemicals]]}}<br />
}}<br />
<br />
''' Sir Dorabji Tata''' (27 August 1859 – 3 June 1932) was an Indian businessman, and a key figure in the history and development of the [[Tata Group]]. He was [[Knight Bachelor|knighted]] in 1910 for his contributions to industry in [[British Raj|British India]].<br />
<br />
==Early life and education== <br />
{{See also|Tata family}}<br />
Dorab was the elder son of Hirabai and [[Parsi people|Parsi]] [[Zoroastrian]] [[Jamsetji Tata|Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata]]. Through an aunt, Jerbai Tata, who married a Bombay merchant, Dorabji Saklatvala, he was a cousin of [[Shapurji Saklatvala]] who later became a [[Communist Party of Great Britain|Communist]] [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Member of the British Parliament]].<ref name=odnb>{{cite book|title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 48|year=1904|publisher=Oxford University Press|pages=675–676|isbn=0-19-861398-9}}Article on Saklatvala by Mike Squires, who refers to Jamsetji as J.N. Tata.</ref><br />
<br />
Tata received his primary education at the Proprietary High School in [[Mumbai|Bombay]] (now Mumbai) before travelling to England in 1875, where he was privately tutored. He entered [[Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge]] in 1877,<ref>{{acad|id=TT877DJ|name=Tata, Dorabji Jamsetji}}</ref> where he remained for two years before returning to Bombay in 1879. He continued his studies at [[St. Xavier's College, Bombay]], where he obtained a degree in 1882.<br />
<br />
Upon graduating, Dorab worked for two years as a journalist at the ''Bombay Gazette''. In 1884, he joined the cotton business division of his father's firm. He was first sent to [[Pondicherry (city)|Pondicherry]], then a [[French colonies|French colony]], to determine whether a cotton mill might be profitable there. Thereafter, he was sent to [[Nagpur]], to learn the cotton trade at the Empress Mills which had been founded by his father in 1877.<br />
<br />
==Marriage==<br />
Dorabji's father Jamshetji had visited [[Mysore State]] in south India on business, and had met Dr. Hormusji Bhabha, a Parsi and the first Indian Inspector-General of Education of that state. While visiting the Bhabha home, he had met and approved of young Meherbai, Bhabha's only daughter. Returning to Bombay, Jamshetji sent Dorab to [[Mysore State]], specifically to call on the Bhabha family. Dorab did so, and duly married Meherbai in 1897. The couple did not have children.<br />
<br />
Meherbai's brother Jehangir Bhabha became a reputed lawyer. He was the father of the scientist [[Homi J. Bhabha]] and thus Dorabji was Homi Bhabha's uncle by marriage. This family connection explains why the Tata group lavishly funded Bhabha's research and the research institutions set up by Bhabha, including the [[Tata Institute of Fundamental Research]].<br />
<br />
==Business career== <br />
Dorabji was intimately involved in the fulfilment of his father's ideas of a modern iron and steel industry, and agreed to the necessity for [[hydroelectric]] electricity to power the industry. Dorab is credited with the establishment of the conglomerates [[Tata Steel]] in 1907 which his father founded and [[Tata Power]] in 1911, which are the core of the present-day [[Tata Group]]. Dorabji is known to have personally accompanied the [[mineralogist]]s who were searching for iron fields, and it is said that his presence encouraged the researchers to look in areas that would otherwise have been neglected. Under Dorabji's management, the business that had once included three cotton mills and the [[Taj Mahal Palace & Tower|Taj Hotel Bombay]] grew to include India's largest private sector steel company, three electric companies and one of India's leading insurance companies. Founder of [[New India Assurance]] Co Ltd. in 1919, the largest General Insurance company in India. Dorabji Tata was knighted in January 1910 by Edward VII, becoming Sir Dorabji Tata.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/28331/pages/526|title=London Gazette, 21 January 1910}}</ref><br />
<br />
==Non-business interest==<br />
Dorabji was extremely fond of sports, and was a pioneer in the Indian Olympic movement. As president of the [[Indian Olympic Association]], he financed the Indian contingent to the [[1924 Summer Olympics|Paris Olympics]] in 1924. The Tata family, like most of India's big businessmen, were Indian nationalists.<ref>Claude Markovits, ''Indian Business and Nationalist Politics 1931–39: The Indigenous Capitalist Class and the Rise of the Congress Party'' (Cambridge University Press, 2002) pp 160–66</ref><br />
<br />
==Death==<br />
[[File:Dorabji Tata Mausoleum Brookwood.jpg|thumb|right|Mausoleum of Dorabji Tata in [[Brookwood Cemetery]]]]<br />
Meherbai Tata died of [[leukaemia]] in 1931 at the age of 52. Shortly after her death, Dorabji established the Lady Tata Memorial Trust to advance the study into diseases of the blood. <br />
<br />
On 11 March 1932, one year after Meherbai's death and shortly before his own, he established a trust fund which was to be used "without any distinction of place, nationality or creed," for the advancement of learning and research, disaster relief, and other philanthropic purposes. That trust is today known as the [[Sir Dorabji Tata and Allied Trusts|Sir Dorabji Tata Trust]]. Dorabji additionally provided the seed money to fund the setting up of India's premier scientific and engineering research institution, the [[Indian Institute of Science]], [[Bangalore]]. <br />
<br />
Dorabji died in [[Bad Kissingen]], Germany on 3 June 1932, at the age of 73. He is buried alongside his wife Meherbai in [[Brookwood Cemetery]], [[Woking]], England. They had no children.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
{{Reflist}}<br />
<br />
==Further reading==<br />
* Choksi, R. "Tata, Sir Dorabji Jamshed (1859–1932)" in ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36420, accessed 28 Jan 2012], a brief scholarly biography<br />
* Nomura, Chikayoshi. "Selling steel in the 1920s: TISCO in a period of transition," ''Indian Economic & Social History Review'' (January/March 2011) 48: pp 83–116, {{doi|10.1177/001946461004800104}}<br />
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==External links==<br />
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070216060932/http://www.dorabjitatatrust.org/history/history.asp Biography at the Dorabji Tata Trust]<br />
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060509113922/http://www.tatacentralarchives.com/NLP/Sir%20Dorabji%20Tata.PDF Biography at Tata Central Archives]<br />
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20100205064010/http://www.tatacentralarchives.com/history/family_tree/family_tree.pdf Tata family tree]<br />
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{{Chairmen of Tata Group}}<br />
{{Tata Group}}<br />
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{{Authority control}}<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tata, Dorabji}}<br />
[[Category:1859 births]]<br />
[[Category:1932 deaths]]<br />
[[Category:Tata family|Dorabji]]<br />
[[Category:Parsi people from Mumbai]]<br />
[[Category:Businesspeople from Mumbai]]<br />
[[Category:Burials at Brookwood Cemetery]]<br />
[[Category:Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge]]<br />
[[Category:Knights Bachelor]]<br />
[[Category:Indian knights]]<br />
[[Category:Indian industrialists]]<br />
[[Category:Indian businesspeople in mining]]<br />
[[Category:Indian businesspeople in coal]]<br />
[[Category:Businesspeople in steel]]<br />
[[Category:Indian philanthropists]]<br />
[[Category:Founders of Indian schools and colleges]]<br />
[[Category:Indian businesspeople in insurance]]<br />
[[Category:Indian businesspeople in textiles]]<br />
[[Category:Tata Group people]]<br />
[[Category:Indian emigrants to Germany]]<br />
[[Category:International Olympic Committee members]]<br />
[[Category:Parsi people]]</div>>El cid, el campeador