Saturday, Dec. 31, 2011
THEN
December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I grants a charter to a group of London-based merchants and gives the East India Company exclusive British trade rights in Asia. The Queen bestows such unparalleled rights in an effort to challenge the Dutch monopoly on the Asian spice trade. By the 18th century, the company’s acute focus on trade in India along with its 200,000 solider standing army, essentially transforms the company into an all out British imperial force ruling much of India. At its height, the East India Company controls about 50 percent of global trade and employs a third of the British workforce. Although the British government does not take direct control of the company until after Indian soldiers in the company’s Bengal army revolt in 1857, the British government begins to reign in the company’s autonomous power under the Regulating Act of 1773. In 1873, the East India Company is dissolved although a small component of it with a focus on tea and coffee trade lives on.
NOW
Today, Indian entrepreneur Sanjiv Mehta owns the famous East India Company. Mr. Mehta acquired ownership of the remains of the once global brand in 2005. Mr. Mehta revitalized the brand into a modern business focusing on luxury foods with a substantial online presence and an upscale London location stocked with over 300 luxury products, including a wide assortment of teas, chocolates, spices and mustards developed by the company in various parts of the world. Mr. Mehta intends to draw on the company’s rich heritage while propelling it into the future. In an interview discussing the East India Company’s London store opening last year, he said, “…at an emotional level as an Indian, when you think with your heart as I do, I had this huge feeling of redemption—this indescribable feeling of owning a company that once owned us.”
