Commemorative stamps for 50th anniversary of Tata steelworks at Jamshedpur.

This is a set of four commemorative stamps produced by the Indian Postal Service in 1958 to celebrate 50 years of the Tata Iron and Steel Company. They picture the founder of the Tata Group, JN Tata, and the Tata steelworks in Jamshedpur. This set of stamps was purchased from an eBay vendor in 2017 for display in the Science Museum’s exhibition Illuminating India: 5000 Years of Science and Innovation.

The Tata Group was founded in India in 1868 by Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839-1907). JN Tata aspired to establish a steel company, a hydroelectric plant, an educational institute and a hotel. In 1908, a year after JN Tata’s death, construction began of a steelworks in Jamshedpur in the state of Jharkhand, and the Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) was founded.

TISCO’s steelworks at Jamshedpur were the first steelworks in India, and highly significant to India’s development as an industrial nation. By the 1930s, three-quarters of all of India’s steel was supplied by TISCO’s output alone. TISCO was the largest producer of steel anywhere in the British Empire, and when the Second World War began, TISCO supplied 1000 tonnes of metal plates each month for use on armoured vehicles. When it marked its 50th anniversary in 1958, TISCO was producing 2 million tonnes of ingot steel each year.

Today, the Tata Group is one of India’s largest conglomerates, with its companies and subsidiaries operating across all sectors. Examples of the many such companies and subsidiaries include Tata Chemicals, Tata Motors, Tata Consultancy Services and Tata Consumer Products. JN Tata has come to be regarded as the ‘Father of Indian industry’. TISCO was renamed Tata Steel Limited in 2005 and is among the top steel-producing companies in the world, with a global operational and commercial presence, and a revenue of $22.67 billion (US) in 2019.