The J. N. Petit Technical High School’s history began 131 years ago on 19 October, 1888 in humbler surroundings at Mumbai, when its doors opened to receive the first batch of 89 destitute and forlorn boys of the Community in need of housing and schooling. Thanks to the munificence of that great Philanthropist of Bombay Mr. Nusserwanji Maneckji Petit the brother of the First Sir Dinshaw Petit, who during his lifetime donated enumerable public institutions to the city of Bombay. The school was started in Bombay as a memorial to Nusserwanji’s son Jamshedji who died at the age of 32.
Over the last 131 years of its existence the J. N. Petit School has not only shifted its location from Bombay to Poona but has also undergone a conceptual change to meet the rigorous demands of the modern educational system as it emerged when India gained independence. The board of Trustees of the school had vision, foresight and the horizon to recognize the need of a newly emerging India and the necessity to change a purely vocational Institute to a full fledged Academic High School with technical bias. The school finally established itself in its present permanent site in Pune in 1948.