The builders of modern Indian business

Indian business has been shaped by a small number of founders whose ambitions went far beyond profit. Some built industries a colonial economy lacked; others created entirely new sectors. Here are the people behind modern Indian business, in roughly the order they made their mark.

Jamsetji Tata: the pioneer

In the nineteenth century, Jamsetji Tata built textile mills and the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Bombay, and dreamt of three things India lacked: a steel plant, hydroelectric power and a world-class science institute. His sons completed all three after his death, founding Tata Steel in Jamshedpur and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

G. D. Birla: industry and independence

G. D. Birla challenged British dominance of the jute industry and went on to build textile, automobile, aluminium and banking companies. A close supporter of Mahatma Gandhi, he showed that Indian industrialists could be part of the freedom movement. His great-grandson Kumar Mangalam Birla now leads the Aditya Birla Group.

J. R. D. Tata: the aviator chairman

J. R. D. Tata held India’s first commercial pilot licence and founded the airline that became Air India. As chairman of the Tata Group for 53 years he expanded it into dozens of companies, including Tata Consultancy Services, where F. C. Kohli laid the foundations of India’s IT services industry.

Dhirubhai Ambani: the outsider

The son of a village schoolteacher, Dhirubhai Ambani worked as a clerk in Aden before starting a trading business in Bombay, and built Reliance into India’s largest private company, persuading millions of small investors to buy shares for the first time. His son Mukesh Ambani later transformed Indian telecoms with Jio.

The software founders

In 1981 N. R. Narayana Murthy and six colleagues founded Infosys with borrowed money, building a company known for transparency and for sharing wealth with employees through stock options. Azim Premji turned his family’s vegetable-oil business, Wipro, into an IT giant and became one of the world’s most generous philanthropists, while Shiv Nadar founded HCL. Together they made software one of India’s biggest exports.

New industries

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw built Biocon into a global biotechnology company. Ratan Tata took the Tata Group global, buying Tetley, Corus and Jaguar Land Rover. Anand Mahindra made Mahindra a global maker of SUVs and tractors, and Uday Kotak built a finance company into one of India’s largest banks.

What they had in common

Most of these founders faced restrictive licensing rules before 1991, shortages of capital and scepticism about Indian products. Many also saw their companies as nation-building projects, funding schools, hospitals and research. That combination of ambition and public purpose remains the most distinctive feature of India’s great business houses.