1929

The establishment of Birla Engineering College at Pilani in 1929, later BITS Pilani, reflected the same institution-building impulse seen in the Tatas' funding of the Indian Institute of Science: deploy capital into the human capital the country would need, not only into the factories that would employ it.

He served as a bridge between Indian industry and the colonial and later post-colonial state, sitting on advisory bodies that shaped early industrial policy, a role that both helped and complicated the group's standing across the ideological transitions of the mid-twentieth century.