Jamsetji and his son Dorabji Tata become founder members of Parsee Gymkhana, founded with a view to encourage sports among the community.

The founder and his family were heavily involved in sports. Dorabji captains the Parsee XI, plays various sports at Cambridge as well as Bombay.

The Openers

“Reserve large areas for football, hockey and parks,” Jamsetji writes to his son, envisioning a city with a sporting culture before even a brick is laid at Jamshedpur.

One Hundred Years of Jamshedpur

Dorabji Tata, now the Tata chairman, sponsors a six-member Indian contingent to the Antwerp Olympics. He works towards creating an Olympic movement and becomes President of the provisional Indian Olympic Committee thereafter.

Tata at the Olympics

The All-India Olympic Games are held as a precursor to the 1924 Paris Olympics, under the tutelage of the provisional committee led by Sir Dorabji

A fifteen-member team, including two women, represent India at the Olympics in Athletics and Tennis, again sponsored by Sir Dorabji.

Dorabji Tata becomes the first President of the Indian Olympic Association, the official Olympics body for the country

The Tata Sports Club (TSC) is established. Sir Nowroji Saklatwala serves as its first President, with JRD Tata and SD Saklatwala as Vice-Presidents.

Club Class

The multipurpose Keenan Stadium, named after JL Keenan, a General Manager of Tata Steel is inaugurated in Jamshedpur. It hosts national and international cricket fixtures till date.

Inter-company Annual Athletic Championship instituted; other sports being included all through the 1940s and 1950s

Naval Tata becomes president of the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF). He holds the position till 1958, during which India wins Olympic golds in London 1948, Helsinki 1952, and Melbourne 1956

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru requests Naval Tata to create a blueprint for Indian sports; this leads to the formation of All India Council of Sports in 1954 to advise the Central Government on policy. Tata serves as its first chief.

Three members of the Tata Sports Club – Leo Pinto, AS Gentle and Lawrie Fernandes – contribute to India’s Hockey gold at the London Olympics. Tata Textile Group’s Baldev Singh represents India in athletics

Lavy Pinto of Air India and later IHCL earns the sobriquet “scorcher of the cinder tracks” as he wins 100m and 200m gold in the inaugural Asian Games at Delhi

Chuni Goswani, SS Narayan, PK Banerjee and Arun Ghosh are part of the team that reaches the semifinals in Football at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Narayan and Tata employees M Devdas and F Franco would represent India in the 1960 Olympics

JRD Tata rarely missed a sporting event and often participated in several sports including slow cycling

Athlete Edward Sequeira, who joined Tata Steel in 1964, sets a national record for 1500m that stands for 25 years; and dominates the national middle-distance scene

JRD Tata offers Bombay Ranji player Milind Rege a job with Tata Steel. This begins a strong involvement of Tata Sports Club with cricket, with Nari Contractor, Dilip Vengsarkar, Ravi Shastri, Sandeep Patil and Sourav Ganguly among beneficiaries

The Champions' Club

Bahadur Singh of TELCO (now Tata Motors) wins three gold, two silver, and three bronze at the Asian level, including golds in the 1978 Bangkok and 1982 Delhi Asiads. He retires from Tata Motors in 2002 and serves as India’s chief athletics coach till 2020

Meet the Oympians

Athletes from Tata Motors and Tata Steel – TC Yohannan, Shivnath Singh, VS Chohan, Suresh Babu and Satish Pillai win medals at the Tehran Asian Games. Yohannan sets a national long jump record that stands for 18 years

Meet the Oympians

M K Kaushik of Tata Steel is part of the Indian team that wins the hockey gold in the Moscow Olympics

Several Tata sportspersons dominate the Indian performance at the Delhi Asian Games. These include Mercy Kuttan (long jump silver), Bahadur Singh (Shot Put gold), Charles Borromeo (800m gold), and others.

Meet the Oympians

On May 23, Tata Steel’s Bachendri Pal becomes the first Indian woman to summit Mt Everest. She later becomes the founding president of Tata Youth Adventure Centre, the precursor to Tata Steel Adventure Foundation

In Love with Mountains

Geet Sethi, who joined Tata Oil Mills (TOMCO) as a trainee in 1983, wins his first World IBSF Billiards title. He goes on to win in 1987 and 2001 and becomes the World Professional Billiards champion in 1992, 1993, 1995 and 1998

Tata Steel steps in to support chess player Dibyendu Barua, the second Indian to achieve the FIDE Grandmaster norm, highlighting the group’s tradition of supporting emerging young talent

Tata Football Academy set up in Jamshedpur. Chuni Goswami, who led the gold-winning Indian team at Asian Games in Jakarta in 1962, serves as its first head

JRD Tata Sports complex with world class facilities for many sports opens at Jamshedpur. Access is free for athletes and open to all residents of Jamshedpur

Tata Archery Academy founded at the JRD Tata Sports Complex in Jamshedpur. The academy has nurtured several national, Asian and world champions since then

On Target

The Tata group takes over the sponsorship of India’s only ATP Tennis championship in Chennai for three years. Tata Motors resumes the title sponsorship for the event, renamed Tata Open Maharashtra, after it moves to Pune in 2018

The Tata group signs Narain Karthikeyan, starting with his participation in Telefonica World Series, as a member of Tata RC Motorsport. In 2005, Karthikeyan becomes the first Indian to break into Formula 1 as part of Team Jordan

Tata Steel sponsors the Indian contingent for the Special Olympics in Dublin. Three participants from Jamshedpur win medals

Tata Athletics Academy is set up in Jamshedpur on the lines of the football and archery academies

Tata group associates with Williams F1 as sponsor with Narain Karthikeyan as second test and reserve driver. An Indian logo is seen on the Formula 1 circuit for the first time

Tata Steel acquires the title sponsorship of the chess tournament at Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands. First organized in 1938, it attracts the best names in chess. Magnus Carlsen holds the record for most wins with eight titles

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) becomes Technology Partner to Ferrari’s Formula 1 team

The Tata group enters the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the first time when TCS associates with the cricket team Rajasthan Royals as a technology partner

TCS becomes the title sponsor for the TCS Amsterdam Marathon. It goes on to partner the New York Marathon in 2013. Other cities include London, Boston, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Sydney, Clark (Philippines), Stockholm (Lidingöloppet), and Toronto

Racing Ahead

Tata Capital inducts Saurav Ghosal to ensure he can concentrate on his Squash career. Ghosal breaks into the top ten PSA ranking in 2019, the first Indian to do so. His titles include Asian Games and Commonwealth golds

Squashing the Competition

Tata Steel and Tata Trusts set up the Naval Tata Hockey Academy in Jamshedpur, followed by the Odisha Naval Tata Hockey High Performance Centre in Bhubaneshwar in 2019.

Goals, Grassroots And Golds

The first edition of Tata Steel Chess India attracts the world’s best grandmasters including Vishwanathan Anand and Hikaru Nakamura

The Battle of the Grandmasters

Archer Komalika Bari becomes the world u/19 recurve champion, highlighting the academy’s work at the grassroots. Several cadets, such as Deepika Kumari, Atanu Das, Dola Banerjee and V Pranitha have been world recurve champions

The Rising Star

The Tata group becomes title sponsor for the IPL, by now the biggest T20 cricket league in the world.

Team Tata, Team India

The Tata group becomes the title sponsor for the first Women’s Premier League (WPL). The inaugural season had five teams and 22 matches.

The Next Frontier in Women's Sports

Jaguar TCS Racing win the ABB FIA Formula Teams’ World Championships for the first time

An Electrifying Finish