India has a long standing tradition of producing high quality officers that serve the world's merchant marine fleet. To a large extent this was made possible by the Indian government's visionary initiative of establishing a few excellent maritime training institutes immediately after independence.

In recent years India's position of leadership has been significantly weakened by an inability to keep pace with the growth in demand in terms of numbers as well as technological sophistication. Inadequate allocation of resources for maritime training from the government and lack of a suitable environment to facilitate private investment led to this decline. However, by the mid 1990's the government had made the necessary changes to enable private initiatives in maritime training.

The Tolani Group, which has a long tradition of establishing and managing institutions of higher learning, was preparing during 1995-1997 to found a new campus-based institute that would mature into a university. As the Tolani Group's primary business is ship owning and ship management, it was acutely aware of the need for India to produce increasing numbers of well educated marine officers. Hence it was decided in late 1997 that the group's new educational initiative should take the form of a modern, purpose built maritime institute.

The first degree program students were accepted in August 1998 and accommodated in temporary facilities until the new 100 acre campus was made operational in late 2000.

(Source:-https://tmi.tolani.edu/tmi-induri/genesis-of-tmi/)