BSE building en route to become official tourist hub

If declared an official tourist destination, that will mark yet another historic milestone for India’s oldest bourse that began to function under a banyan trees way back in 1855 unofficially and officially from 1875. 

“It has been proposed that BSE be made one of the tourist spots in the city and I think it’s a good idea. There is huge interest among people to see the BSE,” Fadnavis said at event organised by the exchange here. “I think its a very good proposal. We’ve started a tourism initiative in Mumbai and I think its best spot to add,” he added in a response to a proposal from the BSE chief Ashishkumar Chauhan. 

The 142-year-old BSE was founded in 1875 by Premchand Roychand, who was an influential businessman in the 19th-century Bombay, as the Native Share & Stock Brokers Association, and began to function from under a banyan tree on Dalal Street in the Kala Ghoda area of south Bombay and shifted the present Phiroze Jeejeebhoy Towers in 1980. Roychand made a fortune in stockbroking and was known as the cotton king, bullion king or just the Big Bull. While BSE is now synonymous with Dalal Street (Broker’s Street), it was not always so. 

The first venue of the earliest stock broker meetings in the 1850s was in rather natural environs - under banyan trees - in front of the Town Hall, where the Horniman Circle is now situated. 

In fact, history of BSE dates back to 1855, when 22 stockbrokers gathered under banyan trees in front of the Town Hall. A decade later, the brokers moved their venue to another set of foliage, this time under banyan trees at the junction of the Meadows Street which is now called the MG Road. 

As the number of brokers increased, they had to shift from place to place, but they always overflowed to the streets. In 1874, the brokers found a permanent place, which was aptly called Dalal Street and became an official organisation known as The Native Share & Stock Brokers Association in 1875.