[2][3] Dwarakanath's great grandfather Jairam Tagore made a large fortune as a merchant and as Dewan to the French government at Chandannagar.

Soon after birth, he was given in adoption to Rammoni's childless elder brother Ramlochan (b.1759 - d.1807), a rich man of his time and a patron of music.

[6] Dwarakanath left school in 1810 at the age of 16 and apprenticed himself under renowned barrister, Robert Cutlar Fergusson and traveled between Calcutta and his estates at Behrampore and Cuttack.

[7] Tagore was a western-educated Bengali Brahmin and a civic leader of Calcutta who played a pioneering role in setting up a string of commercial ventures—banking, insurance, and shipping companies—in partnership with British traders.

He helped found the first[1] Anglo-Indian managing agency (industrial organizations that ran jute mills, coal mines, tea plantations, etc.,[8]) Carr, Tagore and Company.

Tagore's company managed large zamindari estates spread across today's West Bengal and Odisha states in India, and in Bangladesh, and held stakes in new enterprises that were tapping the rich coal seams of Bengal, running tug services between Calcutta and the mouth of the river Hooghly, and growing tea in Assam.

In his obituary, The London Mail newspaper of 7 August wrote: Descended from the highest Brahmin caste of India his family can prove a long and undoubted pedigree.