Motilal Seal
| Mutty Lall Seal | |
|---|---|
Mutty Lall Seal
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| Born | 1792 Kolkata |
| Died | 20 May 1854 Kolkata |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Occupation | Businessman |
Mutty Lall Seal (also spelt Mutty Loll Seal or Mati Lall Seal or Motilal Seal) (1792 – 20 May 1854) was an Indian businessman and philanthropist. Beginning life as a bottle and cork dealer, he closed his run of luck with a colossal fortune out-topping that of all his contemporaries. Mutty Lall Seal and Ramdulal Sarkar, another renowned shipping magnate, have become part of Bengali folklore as great merchant princes.
Mutty Lall Seal was born in a Bengali Hindu family in Kolkata around 1792. His father, Chaitanya Charan Seal, a cloth merchant, died when Mutty Lall was around five years old. His early education started at the 'pathshala', thereafter he went to Martin Bowl's English School and finally passed out from Baboo Nityananda Sen's High School. However his life took a turn, when in 1809, at the age of seventeen he was married to Nagri Dassee, the daughter of Mohan Chand Dey of Surtir Bagan neighbourhood in Kolkata. Mutty Lall Seal accompanied his father-in-law on a pilgrimage tour to northern and western parts of India, and the experience greatly enlightened him. Around 1815 he started working in Fort William, then the bastion of British power. It is said that while working at Fort William he was involved in supply of essential commodities for the British army. Later he also worked as an inspector of Indian Customs at Balikhal.
He started his business career humbly by selling bottles and corks to one Mr. Hudson who was one of the most extensive importers of beer in those days. He traded in cowhides, was the founder and promoter of the first indigo mart which was established under the name of M/s. Moore, Hickey & Co. The English merchants used to hire him for his sound judgements on indigo, silk, sugar, rice, saltpetre etc. He got appointed as "Banian" to around twenty first class agency houses out of around fifty or sixty such houses in Calcutta. Later he also became a landed property speculator as well as merchant successively in partnership with Fergusson Brothers & Co., Oswald Seal & Co. and Tulloh & Co. and in these three firms he was said to have lost some thirty lacs of rupees. He got into exporting of indigo, silk, sugar, rice, saltpetre to Europe and importing of iron and cotton-piece goods from England. He got up a number of cargo boats which were then a new speculation in the market. He worked the old Flour Mills, and shipped whole cargoes of biscuits to Australia for the first emigrants to its newly discovered gold fields. Later he put up a mill to refine sugar on the centrifugal principle. He was the first to use steamships for internal trade in Calcutta, and he prospered in competition with Europeans. In due course he amassed around thirteen trade ships including a steam tug named 'Banian'. He made a vast fortune in a single generation through money-dealing, a phrase which does not merely refer to money-lending, bill discounting and other banking business. There was scarcely a speculation into which he did not enter, and for which he did not supply a portion of funds. From dealings in internal exchanges to contracts for station-building, for the erection of new bazaars to revival of transit companies, there was scarcely an undertaking in which he was not an important, though a quiet shareholder. He funded every promising enterprise he found and made profits in the shape of interest. At one point of time he was in complete control over the market dealing in company's papers. Mutty Lall Seal was one of the founders of Assam Company Ltd.. Under his influence, the then Oriental Life Insurance Company (later reconstructed as New Oriental Insurance Company in 1834) founded by the Europeans, being the first life insurance company on Indian soil, accepted to underwrite Indian lives. He was among the founders of Bank of India. He was on the board of Agricultural And Horticultural Society of India. In the course of time he amassed as much wealth as Dwarkanath Tagore and Rustomjee Cowasjee. In 1878 Kissori Chand Mitra delivered a lecture on the life of Mutty Lall Seal calling him the "Rothschild of Calcutta". About him, Sivanath Sastri writes – "He never adopted unfair means for earning money. He was well-behaved, polite and helpful to others."
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