Since I was brought up in India, I had a VERY -ve reaction just reading the story here on Hacker News. It was kind of built in.
I dont understand why this guy would pick this name for his company. Maybe he never intends to sell in India.
"Turnabout is fair play" as they say - I'm sure there are a bunch of Indians who would love to get a hold of "prized" British assets. It's an ego thing.
For non indians some context - the media in Indian loves to use the British raj and the political correctness associated with it to gain viewers.
'The National Socialist Final Solution Coffee Company'.
What the hell is the guy thinking?
But then again that's exactly what this guy wants. They say that there's no such thing as bad press. He got mentioned on the BBC with absolutley no marketting campaign.
I knew it was big, but a third of the British workforce? That's insane.
Anyway, I welcome the East India Company back. I realise it has almost nothing in common with the original entity, but I personally might buy their tea if it becomes available here, just for the illicit non-PC pro-colonialism thrill.
It's precisely this excess concentration of monopoly power that Adam Smith described in The Wealth of Nations as a criticism of capitalism gone awry [1].
Probably as close to a real-life manifestation of Shinra as we've ever had in history.
Heh, that's the secret branch-off of the brand lifecycle I guess. Companies that have, heretofore, fallen by the wayside or were unceremoniously erased from the collective conscience gets resurrected as a new, edgier brand.
It happened with Indian Motorcycles. Now, _that_ brand is known as the "rebel" brand (though it's ironically owned by a stodgy English private equity firm), while Harley-Davidson has slowly become the "fat yuppie or old fart (re)sowing their wild suburban oats" brand.
I bet you certain elements want to keep the embargo of Cuba by Americans going to keep the market for illicit cigars (and the requisite mystique of smoking one) going strong. Like the big to-do about absinthe. Now that it's semi-legal (as long as it doesn't contain x amount of thujone) it's become passe in the "cool" clubs.
The British East India Company is nothing against the Dutch East India company. From WP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company)
> was a chartered company established in 1602
> It was the first multinational corporation in the world and the first company to issue stock.[1] It was also arguably the world's first megacorporation, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, negotiate treaties, coin money, and establish colonies
> Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in the Asia trade. Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more than 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods. By contrast, the rest of Europe combined sent only 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795, and the fleet of the English (later British) East India Company, the VOC’s nearest competitor, was a distant second to its total traffic with 2,690 ships and a mere one-fifth the tonnage of goods carried by the VOC. The VOC enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly through most of the 1600s.
> The Dutch East India Company remained an important trading concern for almost two centuries, paying an 18% annual dividend for almost 200 years.
