Sir Dorabji Tata the elder son of the Founder, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata was born on August 27, 1859 when Jamsetji was 20 years old.

He attended the Proprietory High School in Bombay and at the age of 16 was sent to a private tutor in Kent.  At 18, he attended Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge. During the two years that he was at Cambridge, he distinguished himself at sports, winning colours at Caius for cricket and soccer. He also played tennis for his college, coxed his college boat, won a number of sprint events and was a good horseman.

In addition to being a ‘blue’ for cricket at Cambridge, Dorabji was a life-long admirer of the renowned cricketer of those Victorian days, W.G. Grace.

He returned to Bombay in 1879 and joined St. Xavier’s College and obtained his B.A. in 1882.

Instead of including Dorabji in his expanding business, Jamsetji encouraged him to broaden his experience, and gave him a stint at journalism. Later he gave him independent charge of setting up a textile project in Pondicherry. Before long he placed him at the Empress Mills.

Jamsetji foresaw the industrial potential of Mysore State. It is on these visits that he came in close contact with the Bhabha family.  H. J. Bhabha was the Inspector-General of Education, Mysore State and the moving spirit in the educational policy of the progressive State of Mysore.  Jamsetji seems to have had a hand in the selection of Meherbai Bhabha as his daughter-in-law.

At the age of 38 Dorabji married the beautiful and much younger Meherbai Bhabha – fondly called Mehri.

Dorabji’s love of sport was abiding. To him India owes her first participation in the Olympic Games.  Even before India had set up an Olympic Committee, Dorabji selected and financed four athletes and two wrestlers for participation in the Antwerp Games in 1920. As President of the Indian Olympic Council, he financed the Indian contingent to the Paris Olympiad of 1924. He was chosen to be a member of the International Olympic committee.

Sir Dorabji had the country scoured for sports talent. He arranged for the then Director of the YMCA to tour the country and bring home to the people of India the importance of the Olympic movement. He helped to found, amongst other institutions the Willingdon Sports Club and the Parsi Gymkhana in Bombay, the High Schools Athletic Association, and the Bombay Presidency Olympic Games Association.

Jamsetji Tata’s ambitions for his country and his city of Bombay knew no limits. He was deeply immersed in the three great constructive enterprises of his life – the Indian Institute of Science which was to prepare future generations of Indians to take full part in the scientific development of Indian industry; the Iron and Steel Works which were to establish this key industry on the most modern principles and the Hydro-Electric Works which were to harness to the service of man the unfailing rainfall of the Western Ghats and relieve Bombay manufacturers from dependence on distant coal fields and pollution.                     

At the time of Jamsetji death his three great schemes still awaited fulfillment. Of his two sons, Dorabji and Ratan, it was Dorabji, with his drive and enthusiasm, and aided by the resolve of his cousin, R.D. Tata, who saw Jamsetji’s projects through to the stage of accomplishment. It was Dorabji who explored Central India for iron ore, riding in bullock-carts, visiting places where they had to make even tea out of soda-water.

The name of Dorabji Tata was included in the Honours List in 1910 when he received a Knighthood, in recognition of his contribution to the industrial advance of India.

Sir Dorabji’s finest hour came in 1924, when the ambitious expansion programme of Tata Steel ran into stormy weather. It was his audacity, which had led the Company into undertaking a five-fold expansion programme in the post-war period. Spiraling prices, combined with transport and labour difficulties in the West, completely upset the price calculations. Also, Tata Steel’s largest pig iron customer, Japan, was struck by an earthquake and the steel prices tumbled.

One day a telegram came from Jamshedpur to say that there was not enough money to pay the wages. Sir Dorabji and R.D. Tata went to the Imperial Bank where Sir Dorabji pledged his entire personal fortune worth about Rs. 1 crore (including his wife’s personal jewellery) to obtain a loan – for a limited company. A crore of rupees then was equivalent to about Rs. 99 crores of today. In the Central Legislative Assembly Motilal Nehru and M. A. Jinnah both supported a bounty in the form of a firm order for steel rails over the coming years. The first returns from expanded production came in and the Company got a breather and finally survived. Sir Dorabji had grit; he had confidence in the intrinsic soundness of the enterprise and took a calculated risk.

At the time of Jamsetji’s death, the Tata enterprises comprised three textile mills and the Taj Mahal Hotel, Bombay. Under Sir Dorabji Tata’s stewardship were added an integrated steel plant – then the largest single unit in the British Empire – three electric power companies, a large edible oil and soap company, two cement companies, one of India’s leading insurance companies and an aviation unit pioneered by J.R.D. Tata. Meanwhile, Sir Dorabji had also seen through the establishment of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, which was to spearhead scientific research in India for decades to come.

Proud as he was of these achievements, he never failed to give due credit to his father’s pioneering spirit. 'Kind fate,’ he once noted, ‘has prompted me to help in bringing to completion his (Jamsetji’s) inestimable legacy of service to the country.’

His final contribution was the establishment of a substantial trust into which he poured all his wealth, down to the last pearl-studded tie-pin.

Sir Dorabji and Lady Tata had no children. Like his father and brother before him, Sir Dorabji believed that wealth must be put to constructive use, and less than a year after his wife died, he put all his wealth into a trust which was to be used ‘without any distinction of place, nationality or creed’, for the advancement of learning and research, the relief of distress, and other charitable purposes. Three months later he died. This was the beginning of the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust.

The Trustees were empowered to sell Sir Dorabji’s lands, shares, securities and jewellery. The jewellery and landed properties were sold by them – even the fabulous Jubilee Diamond. The Trustees were not permitted to withdraw the shares Sir Dorabji had to his credit with Tata Sons. Through the Trust, he sought to ensure the integrity of the parent firm his father, he and R.D. Tata had founded in 1887.

Soon after this as a memorial to his wife, he endowed the Lady Tata Memorial Trust with a corpus for research into leukaemia. The Lady Meherbai D. Tata Education Trust was formed as a much smaller trust, partly from public donations, for the training of women in hygiene, health and social welfare.

On April 11, 1932, Sir Dorabji set sail for Europe expecting, among other things, to visit his wife’s grave in England. It was on this journey that, on June 3, he died at Bad Kissengen, Germany.