Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research has begun benefiting financially from India’s Tata business empire – a year and a half after hosting its father figure.

Clemson officials feted Ratan Tata, former chairman of Tata Sons, in February of 2015, presenting him with an honorary doctorate during the South Carolina Automotive Summit at the downtown Hyatt.

They also took him on a tour of ICAR, where he spoke with graduate students studying automotive engineering, some of them from his home country of India.

Now Tata Trusts, a collection of charitable trusts that Ratan Tata chairs, has agreed to provide fellowships for five students from India to study automotive engineering at ICAR.

Clemson officials hope it’s the start of a broader relationship with the Tata empire, which includes the British company that makes Jaguar and Land Rover cars.

Students receiving the fellowships — each worth $26,500 a year — will be graduates of India’s PSG College of Technology, which also grants degrees in automotive engineering. The fellowships will cover tuition, fees, housing, books and other expenses associated with attending ICAR, said Zoran Filipi, chair of the automotive engineering department. Filipi called the fellowships a "golden ticket" for the students, who "would have needed support to finish their graduate education, even if they stayed in India."

Subramanyan Neelakrishnan, the head of PSG’s auto engineering department, was scheduled to visit Clemson this week to discuss collaboration between the schools.

Anand Gramopadhye, dean of Clemson’s College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Science, said he hopes the relationships with PSG and Tata Trusts will grow.

“If you do good work and you have impact, foundations will continue to invest in you,” said Gramopadhye, who’s originally from India.

Clemson also hopes the fellowships will further establish the university and ICAR as world leaders in automotive engineering, Filipi said. The first five fellows, who will start classes at ICAR in four weeks, will be the first steps in that, he said.

"They will help us spread the word that Clemson has a world-class automotive engineering program," Filipi said at a Tuesday press conference.

ICAR has long hoped that one of the Tata companies, Tata Motors, India’s biggest carmaker and owner of Jaguar Land Rover since 2008, would join other firms in establishing offices at the research park, funding research there or sponsoring Deep Orange, a program in which engineering students develop a car from scratch as part of their education.

The new relationship with Tata Trusts began after Fred Cartwright, ICAR’s executive director, encountered a former professor of his who had retired to Greenville.

That former professor, Indian national Brij Khorana, taught Cartwright when Cartwright was an engineering student at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana.

They reunited in 2014, when Khorana took his brother, Suraj Khorana, a former Tata Motors executive who had reported directly to Ratan Tata, to see ICAR, according to Brij Khorana and Cartwright.

Cartwright saw an opportunity to reach out to Ratan Tata when he learned of Suraj Khorana’s relationship with the world-famous business mogul.

After that, Brij Khorana said he began talking with Cartwright and his brother about ways to establish a relationship with Ratan Tata and suggested Clemson offer to give him an honorary doctorate.

The effort ultimately led to Ratan Tata’s visit to Greenville, where Greenville lawyer David Wilkins, chairman of Clemson’s board at the time, presented him with the honorary degree at the Hyatt.

Ratan Tata also was interviewed on stage at the Hyatt by Keith Crain, editor-in-chief of Automotive News.

Brij Khorana said Ratan Tata was “totally impressed” with ICAR and remarked that he would “like to see all of the automotive engineers in the world to be educated and trained like they are being done here at ICAR.”

After that, Brij Khorana said he proposed a collaboration between Clemson and PSG, thinking that helping PSG students would fit the mission of Tata Trusts.

The initial five students in the program are scheduled to arrive at ICAR this fall.

Meanwhile, Clemson and PSG are talking about a broader collaboration that would include a faculty exchange, said Brij Khorana, who has begun working part-time for Clemson’s engineering college as its scientific advisor for technology partnerships.

Tata Trusts owns a controlling interest in Mumbai-based Tata Sons, which includes more than 100 companies that together collected more than $108 billion in 2014-15, according to its Web site.

Tata companies include Tata Steel, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Power, Tata Chemicals, Tata Global Beverages, Tata Teleservices and Indian Hotels.

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