Relaunch of the East India Company...
Sanjiv Mehta, a Mumbai born Diamond dealer, will relaunch the East India Company by opening a luxury store in the upmarket Mayfair neighbourhood of London next month.
The company was acquired in 2005 from the "30 or 40" people who owned its shares, with a $15-million investment and inputs from a range of experts - from designers and brand researchers to historians
East India Company had once imported many items from its former colony into Britain. Liberty, opened to the public on May 15, 1875, when the founder, Arthur Lasenby Liberty, purchased the lease on a half-shop inRegent Street to which he gave the grand name ‘East India House’.
The Company was colloquially referred to as John Company and in India as Company Bahadur.
The company’s Indian headquarters were in Calcutta and the UK one in Leadenhall Street in the City.
In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter for ‘The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies’, making it responsible for bringing tea, coffee and luxury goods to the West and spreading spices across the globe.
By 1757, the East India Company had become a powerful arm of the British establishment with its own armed forces, fleets and currency as well as controlling Calcutta, Madras and Bengal. But by 1874, the Government of India Act transferred the East India Company powers to the Crown and its business was effectively dissolved.
When Sanjiv Mehta took over the company he took a sabbatical from all other business and tried to understand the history of the company. He travelled around the world, visiting former EIC trading posts and museums, reading up records and meeting people "who understood the business of that time".
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