In October 1932, J.R.D. Tata personally piloted a single-engine de Havilland Puss Moth on India's first commercial airmail flight, flying mail from Karachi to Bombay himself, since the fledgling airline he had just founded — Tata Air Mail, later Tata Airlines — could not yet afford to hire outside pilots for every route.
He had earned his pilot's license as one of the first Indians to do so, and used both his own flying skill and his family's industrial resources to build an airline almost entirely from scratch in a country with barely any aviation infrastructure at the time, insisting on rigorous safety standards even when it slowed expansion.
After India's independence, the government nationalized the airline, folding it into what would become Air India, with Tata continuing to chair it for decades and insisting on the same standards of service and safety he had built the original airline on, reportedly reviewing minor details like cabin crew training and food quality personally.
Beyond aviation, he spent decades leading Tata Sons, expanding the group into steel, chemicals, and technology, while also establishing some of India's most significant philanthropic and scientific institutions, insisting throughout his career that a business's obligations extended well beyond its shareholders.