The Tata Central Archives (TCA), Pune, India, as its 2016 silver jubilee brochure proudly proclaims, is the 'custodian of the Tata story'. This story began more than 150 years ago. The TCA, however, was formally inaugurated only three decades ago. J.R.D. Tata (JRD) who inaugurated TCA on January 7, 1991, had deep respect for preserving historical records, originating perhaps from the advice he received from his father in 1922 to "write down and note everything he saw or heard, so it could serve as a useful record and reference for the future." This respect for records may have remained confined to his own personal collections had he not been denied access to information about Tata Airlines, an airlines that he had founded and nurtured, just a couple of years after its nationalization. He referred to this experience in a note to the Tata directors in 1978, and during the centenary celebrations that year of the Empress Mills, a mill of the Central India Spinning, Weaving and Manufacturing Company, J.N. Tata's first venture, he came up with the idea of starting a central repository. It took another decade for the idea to mature, and it was during the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of J.N. Tata in 1989 that TCA's formation was announced. The credit for translating the idea of a repository into an archives goes to the chronicler of the Tata Group's history and Tata veteran, R.M. Lala.

The first task undertaken by TCA was the collection of the records kept by the various Tata companies. A.N. Mambro, a noted Konkani writer and a Tata employee, was the first Principal Archival Officer. He and his team spent a decade visiting company godowns and other storage sites to identify records of value. Some of the key records so identified were the Bombay Presidency Legislative Assembly Debates, the Mill Owners Association Reports, and some important legal agreements related to the Taj Mahal Hotel. The most prized acquisition, however, was the set of perfectly maintained records of JRD.