The Birla family is one of the foremost business houses in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. The fore-father of the Birla family is Shiv Narain Birla, a member of the Marwari

Marwaris

Marwari or Marwadi or Rajasthani people are Indian ethnic group, that inhabit the Rajasthan region of India. Their language Rajasthani is a part of the western group of Indo-Aryan languages....

 community from Pilani

Pilani

Pilani is a small town situated in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan. It is in the Jhunjhunu district in Rajasthan, India. It notable for being the home of a large number of education institutes for its size.-Etymology:...

, in the westerly state of Rajasthan

Rajasthan

Rājasthān the land of Rajasthanis, , is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It is located in the northwest of India. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert , which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with...

. He moved to Bombay around 1857 to establish a trading house. His son, Baldeodas Birla moved to Calcutta in 1961 to set up his own business. Since then, the Birla family has grown into one of the wealthiest families in India and even today, the Birla name is considered synonymous with wealth and power in India.