The East India Company, once a powerful British trading company that controlled much of India and heralded Britain’s colonization of India, has once again closed its doors, this time as a luxury goods retailer in London. The original East India Company went dormant about 152 years ago, but was revived in 2010 when a British-Indian businessman purchased the rights to the name. The East India Company’s project has now ended in bankruptcy.
The East India Company’s control of India was transferred to the British government. Indian Mutiny of 1857, also known as Sepoy Mutiny. The British Crown came to rule India in 1858, marking the beginning of direct British rule in India.
The East India Company’s legacy is mostly seen as negative due to its large-scale exploitation in India and the rest of Asia. It transformed global trade but also brought great suffering to Indians through violence and the Great Bengal Famine, which killed 30 million people.
When Indian entrepreneur Sanjiv Mehta bought the rights to the East India Company name in 2010, it was seen as revenge on his colonial masters. The fact that a company that once dominated India was now controlled by an Indian was celebrated in headlines around the world.
However, the modern version of the company went into liquidation.
East India Company Limited has appointed a liquidator in October 2025, The Sunday Times reported. According to a British newspaper, the company owes more than £600,000 (Rs 6.3 crore) to its parent group registered in the British Virgin Islands, £193,789 (Rs 2.03 crore) in taxes and £163,105 (Rs 1.71 crore) to its employees. Several related companies with ‘East India’ in their names linked to owner Sanjiv Mehta were also reported to have been dissolved.
The company’s website is down. The store at 97 New Bond Street in Mayfair, London, is said to be empty and being let through an agent. Another linked company, East India Company Collections Limited, also recently received a liquidation petition from its creditors.
Sanjiv Mehta, the entrepreneur who revived the East India Company
Sanjiv Mehta began the process of acquiring the name of the East India Company in the early 2000s from shareholders who wanted to restart it as a wholesale business. In 2010, he opened a 2,000-square-foot luxury store in Mayfair. Like famous stores like Fortnum & Mason, it sold high-quality tea, chocolate, snacks, spices, etc.
Mehta saw this as turning a symbol of colonialism into something positive. In an interview with The Guardian in 2017, he said: “The fact that Indians now own the East India Company means that a negative has been turned into a positive. The historical East India Company was built on aggression, but today’s East India Company is about compassion.”
At its peak in the early 1800s, the original company controlled vast areas of India with a private army of about 250,000 men, twice the size of the British army at the time. This drove global trade in spices, cotton, silk, tea and indigo, but often at great human cost.
A brief history of the original East India Company
Established by royal charter from Queen Elizabeth I on December 31, 1600, the British East India Company began as a joint-stock trading company to compete for spices and goods from the East Indies, including India and Southeast Asia.
The company was one of the world’s first joint-stock companies in which investors purchased shares and shared profits and risks. The company established its first trading post in Surat, India, in 1612–1613. Over time it gained a monopoly on British trade east of the Cape of Good Hope.
By the 1700s, it had grown into a powerful nation, building forts, forming alliances with local rulers, and waging war against rivals such as France and local kingdoms. After the Battle of Plassy in 1757, they collected taxes, ran courts, and ruled territories such as Bengal.
At its peak, it accounted for half of world trade in some goods and acted almost like the government of India.
But his rule exacerbated famine through exploitation, forced cultivation of cash crops, and export policies. A revolt in 1857, sparked by issues such as greased cartridges, ended control. The British Parliament was completely dissolved in 1874 after transferring power to the King.
The story shows how trading companies built empires and shaped modern Indian, British, and global economies, but left behind a deep legacy of injustice.
The second closure of the East India Company marks the end of a strange resurgence.
– end