Ardeshir Darabshaw Shroff 1999 stamp of India

Ardeshir Darabshaw Shroff (4 June 1899 – 27 October 1965) was an industrialist, banker and economist of

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. In 1944, Shroff served as a non-official (since India was not yet independent) delegate at the United Nations "Bretton Woods Conference" on post-war monetary and financial systems. In the same year, and with seven other leading industrialists, Shroff co-authored the

Bombay Plan The Bombay Plan is the name commonly given to a World War II-era set of Import substitution industrialization-based proposals for the development of the post-independence economy of India. The plan, published in 1944/1945 by eight leading Indian in ...

, which was a set of proposals for the development of the post-independence Indian economy. In the 1950s, Shroff was founder-director of the Investment Corporation of India and company chairman of

Bank of India Bank of India (BoI) is an Indian public sector bank headquartered in Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai. Founded in 1906, it has been government-owned since nationalisation in 1969. BoI is a founding member of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Inter ...

and the

New India Assurance Company Limited The New India Assurance Co. Ltd. (''NIACL'') is an Indian public sector insurance company owned by the Government of India and administered by the Ministry of Finance. Headquartered in Mumbai, it is the largest nationalised general insurance ...

. In 1954, Shroff co-founded the Forum of Free Enterprise think tank as a means to counter the socialist tendencies of the

Nehru Jawaharlal Nehru (14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat, and statesman who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20th century. Nehru was a prin ...

government. He complained against the indifference with which the state treated entrepreneurs, and asserted that if the Government of India were to shed some of their 'impractical ideologies' and extend their active support to the private sector, very rapid industrialisation could be brought about within the next 10 years. Shroff also served as company director of the

Tata Group The Tata Group () is an Indian multinational conglomerate group of companies headquartered in Mumbai. Established in 1868, it is India's largest business conglomerate, with products and services in over 160 countries, and operations in 100 c ...

and of several other leading private industries. A biography of Shroff, commissioned by the Forum of Free Enterprise, was published in 2000 by business journalist

Sucheta Dalal Sucheta Dalal (born 1962) is an Indian business journalist and author. She has been a journalist for over two decades and was awarded a Padma Shri for journalism in 2006. She was the Financial Editor for the ''Times of India'' until 1998 when ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shroff, Ardeshir Darabshaw 20th-century Indian economists Parsi people Indian bankers 1899 births 1965 deaths