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
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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.
Rise
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 our 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.
Bhagoti Ram's son, Chaterbhuj, was a devotee of a Jain Yati. The Yati inspired him to go to Bhatinda. He thus started branches in Bhatinda, Amritsar and Hissar. Chaterbhuj's son, Tarachand, added the trading of opium.
Tarachand Ghanshyamdas was the greatest Marwari firm during 1860s and 1914 when it rivalled British companies in size. They took deposits, gave loans, engaged in the wholesale trade, transferred money for clients to distant cities, cashed bills of trade, insured shipments, as well as speculated on commodity futures.
Dissolution
After the dissolution of Tarachand Ghanshyamdas, the three brothers Bimal Kumar Poddar (were adopted by his maternal grandfather Janki Prasad Poddar, a partner of Tarachand Ghanshyamdas), Suresh Neotia and Vinod Neotia set up Radhakrishna Bimalkumar in the mid '50s. As a leading agent of Burma Shell in India it operated several branches across UP, Bihar and West Bengal.
The "Great" Firm model
T. Timberg considers Tarachand Ghanshyamdas to be a good example of a "Great" Firm. He suggests the following challenges to the existence of the great firm:
The model has been used to explain the decline of the Mughal empire.