The business activities of Virji Vora included wholesale trading, money lending, and banking.
19 Facts About Virji Vora
1.
2.
Virji Vora established a monopoly over certain imports in Surat, and dealt with a wide range of commodities including spices, bullion, coral, ivory, lead, and opium.
3.
Virji Vora was a major credit supplier and customer of the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company.
4.
The business house of Virji Vora had branches at several places in India, as well as the port cities of the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and South-East Asia.
5.
Virji Vora had agents at most important commercial centers of India, including.
6.
Virji Vora bought opium and cotton from the local merchants and exchanged them for pepper in South India or in the Spice islands.
7.
Virji Vora competed with the British East India Company at times, but he was their biggest creditor and customer in Surat.
Related searches
Shah Jahan 8.
Virji Vora lent money to individual Englishmen to finance their own private trade - a practice denounced by the Company's London office.
9.
Virji Vora was an important figure in the civic affairs of Surat, and was part of the committees formed to discuss important public issues.
10.
Virji Vora later used his friendship with Mir Musa to monopolize coral, pepper, and other commodities in 1643.
11.
Virji Vora extorted money from the mercantile communities of Surat, and consequently ran into a conflict with Virji Vora.
12.
Virji Vora charged Virji with as many as 50 offences, and sent a list of these offences to the Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan.
13.
Virji Vora denied all the charges, and was summoned by the emperor.
14.
Virji Vora is noted as sending the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan four Arab horses, and prince Murad Bakhsh as presenting the emperor with 18 of the famous Gujarat bullocks in c 1657.
15.
Virji Vora suffered a major setback when the Maratha chief Shivaji raided Surat in 1664.
16.
The French traveler Jean de Thevenot, who visited Surat in the 1660s and developed a friendship with Virji Vora, wrote about the huge monetary loss suffered by him during the Shivaji's raid.
17.
Virji Vora had grown old by 1670, and suffered another setback during Shivaji's second raid of Surat in 1670.
18.
Virji Vora therefore speculates that Virji likely died in 1670.
19.
Gokhale assumes that Virji Vora might have retired from the business after his grandson Nanchand took over the business, and might have died in 1675.