Steel Man of India ‘J.J. Irani ‘passes away at 86

The Tata Steel veteran and its former MD Jamshed J. Irani passed away on October 31, 2022, at 86 years of age.

He was born on June 2, 1936, in Nagpur to Jiji Irani and Khorshed Irani.
Irani completed his Bachelor of Science degree from Science College, Nagpur in 1956 and a Master of Science degree in Geology from Nagpur University in 1958.
He started his professional career with the British Iron and Steel Research Association in Sheffield in 1963 but always yearned to contribute to the Nation’s progress.
He returned to India to join the then Tata Iron and Steel Company (now Tata Steel) in 1968, as Assistant to the Director in charge of Research and Development.
He went on to become the President of Tata Steel in 1985.
He was a keen sportsman who played and followed cricket till his last and had a passion for stamp and coin collection.
He was also the National President of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) from 1992-93.
He was conferred the Padma Bhushan in 2007 for his contribution to the industry.
He was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Government of India in 2008 as an acknowledgment of his services in the area of metallurgy.

Irani was the pioneer of the quality movement in India. He enabled Tata Steel to reinvent itself with a focus on quality and customer satisfaction while becoming the lowest-cost steel producer in the world with quality that could compete in the international market.
Irani also called the Steel Man of India was instrumental in starting the Tata Education Excellence Program in 2003 to improve the quality of academic facilitation through a calibrated approach adopted from the renowned Malcolm Baldrige Performance Excellence criteria.