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The growth in cotton trade was a ripple effect of the American Civil war and enterprising tradesmen from Gujarat migrated to trade in cotton or as weavers and set up residences at the site of the cotton trade — Kalbadevi, where the Cotton Exchange shifted from Colaba and still stands today. It’s easy to miss the building on your way to CP Tank or heading towards Metro in the opposite direction, but the structure is part of the city’s past, one that has built and broken the fortunes of a generation.
The most famous of these men has to be Premchand Roychand whose name is synonymous with cotton exchange as Harshad Mehta’s is with the stock exchange. When the Civil War pushed up cotton prices and by 1865 Bombay registered a whopping 70 million pounds in the cotton trade, the surge in business activity led to speculation.
Roychand’s market operations were simple. Realising that an aggressive business community had discovered ways of making quick money through buying and selling of shares, he proceeded to create conditions that would best suit these speculators. Perhaps the romance of different kinds of cotton is lost on today’s shoppers and tradesmen, but Egyptian and American, all types of cotton vied for attention a century ago.
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