Tarachand Ghanshyamdas

Tarachand Ghanshyamdas was a famous Marwari trading firm that flourished from 1791 to 1957. It is believed to have been responsible to introducing many of now famous Marwari clans from Shekhawati to national and international business field. The grandfathers of both G.D. Birla and Lakshmi Mittal worked for great Tarachand Ghanshyamdas while grandfather of Raja Baldeo Das Birla worked at the great Ganeriwala Firm

Tarachand Ghanshyamdas in 1870, had offices at Kolkata, Mumbai, Amritsar, the Malwa opium belt of Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere. Another great Marwari firm great Sevaram Ramrikhdas employed, the RPG Group patriarch, Rama Prasad Goenka’s grandfather’s great-grandfather, Ramdutt. Its division resulted in independent branches at Kanpur, Mirzapur, Farrukhabad and Kolkata, the Singhanias are descendents of the Kanpur branch.

The firm initially dealt in woolen garments. In the early 19th century many Marwari merchants settled in the opium tracts of Malwa, amajority of them Shekhavati Aggarwals, connected to prominent merchants in Calcutta. Opium soon became a major commodity. The records of “Sevaram Ramrikhdas”, a Marwari firm based out of Mirzapur in 1830s show opium to have been their major commodity. Tarachand Ghanshyamdas had several branches in the opium tracts of Malwa. Opium sales were Legalized in Hong Kong in 1845 after the British defeated China in the First Opium War. The opium trade was expanded after the Second Opium War in 1860. Calcutta became an important market for opium trading after auctions in Bombay were discontinued in 1830s.

The founder of the family was Bugotee Ram (Bhagoti Ram), the treasurer or the fotedar (the term became poddar) of the nawab of Fatehpur, Rajasthan. He was also a banker to the royal families of Jaipur, Bikaner, and Hyderabad. The Poddar family originally belonged to Churu, but when the local thakur imposed heavy tax on the wool trade, the Poddars moved to a village in 1791 in the domain of raja of Sikar and named it Ramgarh. Bhagoti Ram belonged to this clan.

...
Wikipedia