First licensed pilot in India, french soldier & unpaid apprentice; the French born Indian engineered India's major industries!

Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata (29 July 1904 – 29 November 1993) was a French-born Indian aviator and business tycoon. He was the former Chairman of Tata Sons. He became India's first licensed pilot in 1929. In 1983, he was awarded the French Legion of Honour and, in 1992, India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna. J. R. D. Tata was born on 29 July 1904 in Paris, France, the second child of Parsi father Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata and his French wife, Suzanne "Sooni" Brière. His father was a first cousin of Jamsetji Tata, a pioneer industrialist in India.  

As his mother was French, he spent much of his childhood in France and as a result, French was his first language. He attended the Janson De Sailly School in Paris. One of the teacher's at that school used to call him L'Egyptian for some strange reason. Tata also served in the French Foreign Legion for one year in the regiment Le Saphis during the Second World War. After he left the service the whole regiment perished on an expedition in Morocco.

He attended the Cathedral and John Connon School, Bombay. Tata was educated in London, Japan, France and India. He was enrolled in a "crammer" school, and was interested in studying Engineering at Cambridge. Just as the crammer course was ending and he was hoping to enter Cambridge, a law was passed in France to draft into the army, for two years, all French boys at the age of 20. As a citizen of France J.R.D had to enlist in the army for at least 1 year. Soon the Colonel of the regiment found that there was a member of his Squadron who could not only read and write French and English, but also could type, so he assigned him as a secretary in his office. Tata was once again transferred to a more luxurious office of a colonel. 

After a 12 month period of conscription in the French Army he wanted to proceed to Cambridge for further education, but his father decided to bring him back to India and he joined Tata Company. In 1929, JRD renounced his French citizenship and became an Indian citizen, and started working at Tata. In 1930 JRD married Thelma Vicaji. J. R. D. Tata was inspired early by pioneer Louis Blériot, and took to flying. On February 10, 1929, Tata obtained the first pilot licence issued in India. He later came to be known as the father of Indian civil aviation. He founded India's first commercial airline, Tata Airlines in 1932, which became Air India in 1946, now India's national airline.

He joined Tata & Sons as an unpaid apprentice in 1925. In 1938, at the age of 34, JRD was elected Chairman of Tata & Sons making him the head of the largest industrial group in India. He took over as Chairman of Tata Sons from his second cousin Nowroji Saklatwala. For decades, he directed the huge Tata Group of companies, with major interests in Steel, Engineering, Power, Chemicals and Hospitality. He was famous for succeeding in business while maintaining high ethical standards - refusing to bribe politicians or use the black market.

Under his chairmanship, the assets of the Tata Group grew from US$100 million to over US$5 billion. He started with 14 enterprises under his leadership and half a century later on July 26, 1988, when he left, Tata & Sons was a conglomerate of 95 enterprises which they either started or in which they had controlling interest.

He was the trustee of the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust from its inception in 1932 for over half a century. Under his guidance, this Trust established Asia's first cancer hospital, the Tata Memorial Center for Cancer, Research and Treatment, in Bombay in 1941. It also founded the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS, 1936), the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR, 1945), and the National Center for Performing Arts.

In 1945, he founded Tata Motors. In 1948, JRD Tata launched Air India International as India's first international airline. In 1953, the Indian Government appointed JRD Tata as Chairman of Air India and a director on the Board of Indian Airlines - a position he retained for 25 years. For his crowning achievements in aviation, he was bestowed with the title of Honorary Air Commodore of India.

JRD Tata cared greatly for his workers. In 1956, he initiated a program of closer 'employee association with management' to give workers a stronger voice in the affairs of the company. He firmly believed in employee welfare and espoused the principles of an eight-hour working day, free medical aid, workers' provident scheme, and workmen's accident compensation schemes,which were later, adopted as statutory requirements in India. He was also a founding member of the first Governing Body of NCAER, the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi,India’s first independent economic policy institute established in 1956. 

In 1968, he founded Tata Consultancy Services. In 1979, Tata Steel instituted a new practice: a worker being deemed to be "at work" from the moment he leaves home for work till he returns home from work. This made the company financially liable to the worker for any mishap on the way to and from work. In 1987, he founded Titan Industries. Jamshedpur was also selected as a UN Global Compact City because of the quality of life, conditions of sanitation, roads and welfare that were offered by Tata Steel.

This dreamer had a zillion ideas & found his first product idea for TUPPERWARE working in a plastic factory!!!

Earl Silas Tupper (July 28, 1907–October 5, 1983) was an American born-Costa Rican businessman and inventor, best known as the inventor of Tupperware, an airtight plastic container for storing food. Tupper was born on a farm on Cates Hill in Berlin, New Hampshire. The Tupper Family moved from Berlin when Earl was 3 years old. After studying at Bryant University (then Bryant & Stratton), he began a landscaping and nursery business until the Great Depression forced the business into bankruptcy. He then got a job with the DuPont Chemical Company. He died in October 03, 1983.

Earl Tupper was a dreamer and a tinkerer who liked to improve the things he saw around him. Always devising better gadgets and gizmos, Tupper held equally strong opinions about how to improve the people around him. Born to a poor farming family, he aspired to be a millionaire and a famous inventor, and he achieved both goals.

Tupper also kept an illustrated notebook of his inventions. He fancied himself to be a latter-day Leonardo da Vinci. His "inventions" were wide-ranging. They included a better stocking garter, a dagger-shaped comb to be clipped to one's belt, pants that wouldn't lose their crease, and a fish-powered boat. He devised a convertible top for a rumble seat, customized cigarettes with names like "sporty" and "the collegiate," a better way to take out a burst appendix, and hundreds of other innovations.

He doggedly tried to sell his inventions, but had little luck. To support himself, he set up a tree surgery and landscaping business. During the Depression, however, Tupper's clients cut back, and Tupper Tree Doctors was forced into bankruptcy in 1936. Earl Tupper was lucky to get a job in one of the plastics factories in Leominster, Massachusetts. 

It was famous for its comb industry, had made the switch to plastic in the late 19th century, and there were many small plastics factories run by self-taught engineer/inventors. It was a great place for Tupper. After one year working for the Viscaloid plant (the plastics manufacturing division of DuPont), Tupper bought a few used molding machines and began making beads and plastic containers for cigarettes and soap. He called his company Tupper Plastics.

Using black, inflexible pieces of polyethylene slag, a waste product of oil refining process given to him by his supervisor at DuPont Chemical Company, Tupper purified the slag and molded it to create lightweight, non-breakable containers, cups, bowls, plates, and even gas masks that were used in World War II. He later designed liquid-proof, airtight lids, inspired by the secure seal of paint can lids.

Tupper founded the Tupperware Plastics Company in 1938 and in 1946 introduced Tupper Plastics to hardware and department stores. Around 1948, he joined forces with Brownie Wise, who caught his attention after she made a lengthy phone call to his office in South Grafton, Massachusetts, in which she explained her extraordinary success selling Tupperware via home parties.

Based on a marketing strategy developed by Wise, Tupperware was withdrawn from sale in retail stores in the early 1950s and Tupperware "parties" soon became popular in homes. This was the first instance of "party-plan" marketing.

The Corporate headquarters was moved from Massachusetts to Orlando, Florida. After his falling-out with Wise, which resulted in her dismissal in 1958, Tupper sold The Tupperware Company for $16 million to Rexall. Shortly afterward, he divorced his wife, gave up his U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes, and bought an island just off the coast of Costa Rica.

Tupperware is the name of a home products line that includes preparation, storage, containment, and serving products for the kitchen and home, which were first introduced to the public in 1948. Tupperware develops, manufactures, and internationally distributes its products as a wholly owned subsidiary of its parent company Tupperware Brands. It is marketed by means of direct sales through an independent sales force of approximately 1.9 million consultants.

He was convinced having two personalities in childhood; learnt psychiatry from own life & childhood events & praised by Freud!!!

Carl Gustav Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961), often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature, and related fields. He was a prolific writer, many of whose works were not published until after his death.

Born in Kesswil, in the Swiss canton of Thurgau, on 26 July 1875 as the fourth but only surviving child of Paul Achilles Jung and Emilie Preiswerk. Jung's father was a poor rural pastor in the Swiss Reformed Church while his mother came from a wealthy Swiss family. Emilie Jung was an eccentric and depressed woman who spent much of her time in her own separate bedroom enthralled by the spirits that she said visited her at night.

Jung was a solitary and introverted child and was convinced from childhood that, like his mother, he had two personalities—a modern Swiss citizen and a personality more suited to the nineteenth century. "Personality Number 1," as he termed it, was a typical schoolboy living in the era of the time. "Personality Number 2" was a dignified, authoritative and influential man from the past.

Jung did not plan to study psychiatry since it was not considered prestigious at the time. But, studying a psychiatric textbook, he became very excited when he discovered that psychoses are personality diseases. His interest was immediately captured—it combined the biological and the spiritual and was exactly what he was searching for.

In 1895 Jung studied medicine at the University of Basel. In 1900 he began working in the Zurich psychiatric hospital Burghölzli with Eugen Bleuler. His dissertation, published in 1903, was titled "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena." In 1906 he published Studies in Word Association and later sent a copy of this book to Sigmund Freud which led to a close six year friendship between them. Jung and Freud influenced each other during the intellectually formative years of Jung's life. Freud called Jung "his adopted eldest son, his crown prince and successor". 

The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development. Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. 

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types. Jung saw the human psyche as "by nature religious" and made this religiousness the focus of his explorations. Jung is one of the best known contemporary contributors to dream analysis and symbolization.

Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas such as Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his ambition was to be seen as a man of science. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense.

Jung founded a new school of psychotherapy, called analytical psychology or Jungian psychology. His theories include:

• The concept of introversion and extraversion (although he did not define these terms as they are popularly defined today).
• The concept of the complex.
• The concept of the collective unconscious, shared by all people. It includes the archetypes.
• Synchronicity as a mode of relationship that is not causal, an idea that has influenced Wolfgang Pauli (with whom he developed the notion of unus mundus in connection with the notion of non-locality) and some other physicists.

His also focused on other areas like Individuation, Persona, Spirituality, Alchemy, Alcoholics Anonymous and Art therapy.

Having started as a clerk; this MACINTOSH followed his passion in chemistry leading to invention of first waterproof fabric/!!!

Charles Macintosh (29 December 1766 – 25 July 1843) was a Scottish chemist and inventor of waterproof fabrics. The Mackintosh raincoat is named for him. Macintosh was born in Glasgow, and was first employed as a clerk. By age 19, he instead pursued his interest in chemistry and science derived from his father, George Macintosh who was a well-known and inventive dyer. Charles was prepared with university studies at Glasgow and as a student of Joseph Black at Edinburgh. 

He devoted all his spare time to science, particularly chemistry, and before he was twenty resigned his clerkship to take up the manufacture of chemicals. In this he was highly successful, inventing various new processes. His experiments with one of the by-products of tar, naphtha, led to his invention of waterproof fabrics, the essence of his patent being the cementing of two thicknesses of cloth together with natural (India) rubber, the rubber being made soluble by the action of the naphtha.

By the time he was twenty, Charles had opened a plant in Glasgow to produce sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) and Prussian blue dye. He also introduced the manufacture of lead and aluminum acetates to Britain, and developed new processes to dye cloth. In 1797, he established Scotland’s first alum works at Hurlet, Renfrewshire. He found a source of the alum in waste shale from coal mines. Additional chemical works followed later.

In 1818, while analysing the by-products of a works making coal gas, he discovered dissolved indiarubber. He joined two sheets of fabric together with this solution, allowed them to dry, and discovered that the new material could not be penetrated by water - the first rainproof cloth. For his various chemical discoveries he was, in 1823, elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1828, he became a partner with James Beaumont Neilson in a firm to exploit the latter's patent for the hot blast blowing of blast furnaces, which saved considerably on their fuel consumption.

In 1823, while trying to find uses for the waste products of gasworks, Macintosh noted that coal-tar naphtha dissolved india rubber. He then took wool cloth, painted one side of it with the rubber preparation, and placed another thickness of wool cloth on top, thereby producing a waterproof fabric. Soon after he began the manufacture of coats and other garments. But problems developed. In the process of seaming a garment, tailors punctured the fabric, allowing rain to penetrate; the natural oil in woollen cloth caused the rubber cement to deteriorate; and, in the earlier years, the garments became stiff in winter and sticky in hot weather. The mackintosh, as it came to be known, was greatly improved when vulcanized rubber, which resisted temperature changes, became available in 1839.

Macintosh married, in 1790, Mary Fisher, daughter of Alexander Fisher a merchant of Glasgow. Charles Macintosh died in 1843 at Dunchattan, Scotland, and was buried in the churchyard of Glasgow Cathedral.

A yeast factory which Macintosh set up in 1809 failed because of opposition from London brewers. Meanwhile, he continued to buy all the ammonia and the tar waste byproducts from the Glasgow coal-gas works. He utilized the ammonia in the production of cudbear, a useful dye extracted from various lichens. By varying the choice of mordant used with this dye, manufacturers could colour textiles in a range of shades from pink to blue. The tar could be distilled to produced naphtha - a volatile, oily liquid hydrocarbon mixture. Although this could be used in flares, from 1819, Macintosh continued to experiment to find more ways to utilize naphtha, so that the original tar waste could yield more value.

In June 1823, Macintosh patented his process using a solution of india-rubber in naphtha soaked between two layers of cloth forming a sandwich that was pressed together. The rubber interior provided a layer impermeable to water, though still flexible. His patent, No. 4,804, described how to “manufacture for rendering the texture of hemp, flax, wool, cotton, silk, and also leather, paper and other substances impervious to water and air.” (The sandwich-type construction was not totally new, for it had been devised by Spanish scientists to make leak-proof containers for mercury, and also Charles Green in 1821 had made a balloon envelope that applied the same principle.)

In another application of his inventiveness, Macintosh developed improved methods of iron production, which was much faster than the existing methods. He patented a method for converting malleable iron into steel (1825) in which the iron was raised to white heat in a current of coal gas which provided a carbon content. The process was unsuccessful in commercial application because of the problem involved in keeping a furnace gas-tight. He then assisted Beaumont Neilson in bringing hot blast into use in blast furnaces (1828). By introducing hot air into the furnace, instead of cold air, the smelting process was made more efficient. In return, he was given a share in Beaumont’s patent. This was more of a loss than a gain because of protracted litigation concerning the patent that lasted until 1843.

This business leader, with his own vision ventured into new business; became one of the wealthiest & donated 25% of his wealth!!

Azim Hashim Premji (born 24 July 1945) is an Indian business tycoon and philanthropist who is the chairman of Wipro Limited, guiding the company through four decades of diversification and growth to emerge as one of the Indian leaders in the software industry. According to Forbes, he is currently the fourth wealthiest Indian, and the 61st richest in the world, with a personal wealth of $15.3 billion in 2014. In 2000, he was voted among the 20 most powerful men in the world by Asiaweek. He has twice been listed among the 100 most influential people by TIME Magazine, once in 2004 and more recently in 2011. Premji owns 75% percent of Wipro and also owns a private equity fund, PremjiInvest, which manages his $1 billion personal portfolio.

He was born in Mumbai then part of British India in a Muslim family originally hailing from Kutch in Gujarat. His grandfather was a noted businessman and was known as Rice King of Burma. After partition, when Jinnah invited his grandfather to come to Pakistan, he turned down the request and chose to remain in India. He has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering degree (equivalent to a Bachelor of Engineering degree) from Stanford University, USA. He is married to Yasmeen. The couple have two children, Rishad and Tariq. Rishad is currently the Chief Strategy Officer of IT Business, Wipro.

In 1966, on the news of his father's death, the then 21 year old Azim Premji returned home from Stanford University, where he was studying engineering, to take charge of Wipro. The company, which was called Western Indian Vegetable Products at the time, dealt in hydrogenated oil manufacturing but Azim Premji later diversified the company to bakery fats, ethnic ingredient based toiletries, hair care soaps, baby toiletries, lighting products, and hydraulic cylinders. 

In the 1980s, the young entrepreneur, recognizing the importance of the emerging IT field, took advantage of the vacuum left behind by the expulsion of IBM from India, changed the company name to Wipro and entered the high-technology sector by manufacturing minicomputers under technological collaboration with an American company Sentinel Computer Corporation. Thereafter Premji made a focused shift from soaps to software.

Premji has been recognised by Business Week as one of the Greatest Entrepreneurs for being responsible for Wipro emerging as one of the world’s fastest growing companies. In 2000, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. In 2006, Azim Premji was awarded Lakshya Business Visionary by National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai. In 2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut for his outstanding philanthropic work.

In 2001, he founded Azim Premji Foundation, a non-profit organisation, with a vision to significantly contribute to achieving quality universal education that facilitates a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society. The Foundation works in the area of elementary education to pilot and develop 'proofs of concept' that have a potential for systemic change in India's 1.3 million government-run schools. 

A specific focus is on working in rural areas where the majority of these schools exist. This choice to work with elementary education (Class I to VIII) in rural government-run is a response to evidence of educational attainment in India.

In 2005, the Government of India honoured him with the title of Padma Bhushan for his outstanding work in trade and commerce. In 2011, he has been awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award by the Government of India. In 2013, he received the ET Lifetime Achievement Award.

Azim Premji has become the first Indian to sign up for the The Giving Pledge, a campaign led by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, to encourage the wealthiest people to make a commitment to give most of their wealth to philanthropic causes. He is the third non-American after Richard Branson and David Sainsbury to join this philanthropy club.

"I strongly believe that those of us, who are privileged to have wealth, should contribute significantly to try and create a better world for the millions who are far less privileged"--- Azim Premji

In April 2013 he said that he has already given more than 25 per cent of his personal wealth to charity.

This MAVERICK patriot devoted life for the country since age of fifteen, remained AZAD till his last breath!!!

Chandra Shekhar Azad (23 July 1906 – 27 February 1931), popularly known as Azad ("The Liberated"), was an Indian revolutionary who reorganised the Hindustan Republican Association under the new name of Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) after the death of its founder, Ram Prasad Bismil, and three other prominent party leaders, Roshan Singh, Rajendra Nath Lahiri and Ashfaqulla Khan. He is considered to be the mentor of Bhagat Singh and chief strategist of the HSRA.

Chandra Shekhar Azad was born in Bhavra village, in the present-day Alirajpur district of Madhya Pradesh. He was then called Chandra Shekar Tiwari. His forefathers were from the Badarka village near Kanpur (in present-day Unnao District. His mother wanted her son to be a great Sanskrit scholar and persuaded his father to send him to Kashi Vidyapeeth, Banaras to study. In December 1921, when Mohandas K. Gandhilaunched the Non-Cooperation Movement, Chandra Shekhar, then a 15-year old student, joined. 

As a result, he was arrested. On being produced before a magistrate, he gave his name as 'Azad', father's name as 'Swatantra' (independent) and residence as 'Jail'. From that day onward, having announced his name to be Azad (The Liberated) in court, he was known as Chandra Shekhar Azad among the people.

After suspension of the non-cooperation movement in 1922 by Gandhi, Azad became more aggressive. He committed himself to achieve complete independence by any means. Azad also believed that India's future lay in socialism. He met a young revolutionary, Pranvesh Chatterji, who introduced him to Ram Prasad Bismil who had formed the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), a revolutionary organisation. Azad was impressed with the aim of HRA, i.e., an independent India with equal rights and opportunity to everyone without discrimination of caste, creed, religion or social status. 

On introduction, Bismil was impressed by Azad, when Azad reportedly put his hand over a lamp and did not remove it till his skin burnt. He then became an active member of the HRA and started to collect funds for HRA. Most of the fund collection was through robberies of government property. He also wanted to build a new India based on socialist principles. Azad and his compatriots also planned and executed several acts of violence against the British. 

Most of his revolutionary activities were planned and executed from Shahjahanpur which was also the hometown of Ram Prasad. He was involved in the Kakori Train Robbery of 1925, in the attempt to blow up the Viceroy's train in 1926, and at last the shooting of J.P. Saunders at Lahore in 1928 to avenge the killing of Lala Lajpat Rai.

Azad made Jhansi his organisation's hub for some time. He used the forest of Orchha, situated 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from Jhansi, as a site for shooting practice and, being an expert marksman, he trained other members of his group. Near the forest he built a hut near to a Hanuman Temple on the banks of the Satar River. He lived there under the alias of Pandit Harishankar Brahmachari for a long period, and started teaching children from the nearby village of Dhimarpura. In this way he managed to establish good rapport with the local residents. The village Dhimarpura was renamed as Azadpura by the Madhya Pradesh government.

While living in Jhansi, he also learned to drive a car at Bundelkhand Motor Garage in Sadar Bazar. Sadashivrao Malkapurkar, Vishwanath Vaishampayan and Bhagwan Das Mahaur came in close contact with him and became an integral part of his revolutionary group. The then congress leaders from Raghunath Vinayak Dhulekar and Sitaram Bhaskar Bhagwat were also close to Azad. He also stayed for sometime in the house of Rudra Narayan Singh at Nai Basti, as well as Bhagwat's house in Nagra.

Azad died at Alfred Park in Allahabad on 27 February 1931 when he went to the city to meet with a revolutionary colleague, Sukhdev Raj. The police were notified of his location by an informer. Faced with armed police, Azad fired upon them. He was wounded in the process of killing three policemen and wounding some others. His actions made it possible for Sukhdev Raj to escape. After a long shootout, holding true to his pledge to never be captured alive, he shot himself dead with his last bullet.

The file related to Azad is preserved inC.I.D. Headquarters, 1, Gokhale Marg, Lucknow. The Colt pistol of Chandra Shekhar Azad is displayed at the Allahabad Museum. The body was sent to Rasulabad Ghat for cremation without informing general public. As it came to light, people surrounded the park where the incident had taken place. They chanted slogans against the British rule and praised Azad.