From Salt to Steel Trivia Quiz

Answer: No

Jamsetji Tata was born in a family of Zoroastrian priests and was the first among them to venture into business. He initially set up a trading company in 1868 and then established the Empress Mills, a textile manufacturing plant in Nagpur in central India.

The mills had a number of innovative labour welfare schemes like the Pension fund which was set up in 1886 and the practice of paying accident compensation which was initiated in 1895. The mills performed well for a number of years; however, the market for coarse and medium cotton cloth produced therein started declining in the 1960s-70s.

The group eventually decided against investing further funds in the textile business and the mills were finally shut down in 1986.

Answer: Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal hotel is located next to the Gateway of India and overlooks the Arabian Sea. Contrary to popular perception, it was designed by an Indian architect Raosaheb Sitaram Khanderao Vaidya. The well known English architect, WA Chambers, took over only after the former's death and didn't make any major changes to the original plans.

There are several myths surrounding its construction. A popular one states that Jamsetji Tata built it after being denied entry to a 'whites only' hotel located nearby. This has since been debunked by historians. It is now believed that Tata built the hotel to attract people to the city as a plague threatened to drive them away. Another myth states that the hotel was mistakenly built facing the wrong side and when the English architect saw the error while entering the city by boat, he jumped off the ship and committed suicide. This one has been proved to be untrue as well.

The Indian Hotels Company, the hospitality wing of the group, now owns and operates many hotels across the world. The Pierre, a well known hotel in New York City, was taken over by the Taj Group in 2005.

Answer: Jamshedpur

Jamsetji's interest in iron was created by a geological report he had come across in the 1880s. In 1902, he travelled to Pittsburgh to convince the American geologist Charles Page Perin to help him find suitable sources of the mineral in India. Apart from iron, it was also important that reserves of limestone, coal and water were also found abundantly in the area. The village of Sakchi located on the Chota Nagpur plateau was finally found appropriate for setting up the plant.

The foundation for the plant was finally laid in 1907, three years after the death of Jamsetji. In 1912, the first steel ingot was produced. By 1939 it was considered to be the largest steel plant within the British Empire.

At the time of selection, the village was located in the middle of nowhere and lacked any sort of basic amenities. Jamsetji wished to build a city that provided comfort and convenience of the workers of the plant. Apart from basic infrastructure, schools, parks and places of worship were also built. Tata Steel also implemented other employee friendly practices like the eight hour work day and paid leave concepts well before they were made mandatory in India. In 1919, the city was renamed Jamshedpur in honour of the man whose vision made it possible.

Answer: No

JRD Tata is regarded as the father of Indian civil aviation. In 1932, JRD himself flew a small plane carrying mail from Karachi to Bombay which is considered the first commercial flight to be operated in India. This led to the formation of Tata Airlines which was later renamed to Air India in 1946. Air India was nationalized in 1953 and became the flag carrier for the country. JRD continued to remain as the chairman until 1978 and despite not being the owner, his passion for the company was the same.

The Tata group re-entered the aviation business in 2013 through a 40% stake in the Indian arm of low cost carrier, Air Asia. The same year the group also formed a joint venture with Singapore Airlines to launch another airline named Vistara.

Answer: Tetley

Tetley was formed by two brothers, Joseph and Edward Tetley, in Yorkshire, England in the early 19th century. The company grew to become one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of tea in the world. It was the first to introduce the concept of tea bags in England.

In 2000, the Tata group acquired Tetley for £271 million in the largest overseas acquisition made by an Indian company at the time. Later the company went on to acquire Eight O'Clock Coffee, an American coffee company and Grand Coffee, a Russian coffee brand.

It also set up its own mineral water brand - Himalaya. In 2010, the company was rebranded as Tata Global Beverages to reflect its diverse offerings. It also went on to form a joint venture with the popular coffee chain Starbucks to set up outlets in India.

Answer: Indica

While there were several other cars already being manufactured in India, the most popular being Maruti Suzuki's 800 model, the Indica was the first fully indigenous Indian car. In 2009, the company launched the Tata Nano, which at the time was the cheapest car in the world with a price tag of one lakh (hundred thousand) rupees. The then chairman of the group, Ratan Tata, was driven to produce it when he saw a family of four getting wet on a scooter while travelling in the rain. He hoped the low price would help more people make the transition from two wheelers to the relative safety and comfort of a four wheeler vehicle. Despite land disputes in the state of West Bengal prompting the shifting of the entire plant and ancillary companies to another state and the resultant increase in production costs, Mr. Tata stuck to the promised price of one lakh because as he said "a promise is a promise".

At the other end of the spectrum, Tata Motors also acquired iconic British luxury car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover in 2008.

Answer: Packaged food

Titan was established in 1984 and was only the third watch manufacturer in the country after the government owned HMT and Allwyn. The company has various brands across price ranges from Fastrack which is at the lower end and targetted mainly at students to luxury brands like Xylus and Edge.

Other than the ones listed among the options, the company also has a precision engineering division.

Answer: IT Software

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was formed in 1968 and its early work included an inter branch reconciliation system for the Central Bank of India. When Ratan Tata took over as the chairman of the Tata group, he identified information technology as one of the new growth drivers which led to TCS being brought into focus.

It soon became one of the major IT companies in the country. It was listed on the public stock exchange in 2004 and within a few years had become one of the largest Indian companies by way of market capitalization.

Answer: Swach

Swach means clean in Hindi. Access to clean drinking water is still a major problem for a vast majority of the people in India. While the development of Tata Swach was mainly driven by Tata Chemicals, other Tata group companies also pitched in. For instance, Titan helped to produce a mass assembly line for quick roll out of these products. In the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, thousands of these filters were provided to people in affected regions by another group company, TCS, to check the spread of water borne diseases.

The main business of Tata Chemicals involves the production of chemicals and fertilizers. Its largest soda ash production plant, which is also the second largest in India, is based at Mithapur in Gujarat. Mithapur is named after the Gujrati word for salt.

Answer: Birla Institute of Technology

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is the oldest among the three and was conceived by Jamsetji Tata, the founder of the group, influenced by a chance encounter with Swami Vivekanand while they both were on a sea voyage.

The Energy and Resources Institute, also known as TERI, was established in 1974 as the Tata Energy Research Institute. It was the brainchild of a Tata employee from Tata Chemicals who worried about the growing levels of energy spent by the factory on desalination proposed the idea of a research institute to study the depletion of natural sources. The then chairman JRD Tata immediately concurred which led to the establishment of TERI.

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) is involved in research in science and mathematics and was set up at the behest of Dr. Homi Bhabha, who charted the path for India's atomic energy program. He sought help from the Tatas to have an institute dedicated to mathematical research and they readily stepped in.

One of the remarkable things about the group is that around 66% stake of the main holding company, Tata Sons, is held by philanthropic trusts run by the group. Thus, for every 100 rupees earned, 66 rupees is spent towards various charitable causes. The Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai is one of the foremost cancer hospitals of the country with a vast number of patients being treated free of cost. The group also funds education through scholarships instituted for deserving students.