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The company was founded by Tata Group founder and industrialist Jamshedji Tata. He incorporated Indian Hotels Company Limited in 1899 and registered in 1902. The first hotel of the company was opened — The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Colaba neighbourhood of Mumbai was opened in 1903. It was the first five star hotel in India with modern elevators and Russian carpets.
In 1980 the Taj Group opened their first international hotels: the Taj Sheba Hotel in Sana'a, Yemen and the Taj Pamodzi in Lusaka, Zambia. IHCL entered the Sri Lankan market with Taj Exotica Bentota and Taj Samudra in Colombo. In joint venture with G. V. Krishna Reddy, Taj Hotels form Taj GVK which started mega scale businesses in Hyderabad with Taj Banjara, Taj Krishna and Taj Deccan. IHCL entered Middle Eastern market with opening a hotel in Dubai — the Taj Palace Hotel Dubai. Next year the company opened three more hotels — the Regent Hotel in Mumbai, Rawal-Kot in Jaisalmer and Usha Kiran Palace in Gwalior.
The company planned to open hotels in Jamshedpur and Ranchi. Taj Surya was opened in Coimbatore and later renamed as Vivanta. Every brand of IHCL built hotels in every major city of India.
IHCL also operates TajSATS Air Catering, in a joint venture with SATS . In May 2017, IHCL announced it was moving all of its hotels under a unique brand, Taj Hotels Palaces Resorts Safaris. The brands Vivanta by Taj and Gateway were merged into a single business unit. During the summer of 2017, Cyrus Mistry stated that some of the group's latest costly acquisitions "destroyed the economic value of the company". The unique brand decision was reversed in 2018.In April 2018, the group opened its first location in Saudi Arabia through a partnership with the Umm al-Qura construction company. In April 2019, IHCL launched the hotel brand SeleQtions with 12 location openings. In May 2019, IHCL signed a strategic partnership with GIC Private Limited to acquire 600 million dollars' worth of hotel assets over three years.
