2 min readFeb 24, 2026 07:22 AM IST First published on: Feb 24, 2026 at 07:10 AM ISTEmpires are carving up the world and its natural resources, revanchism and territorial warfare are on the rise, the superiority of Western civilisation is being asserted, and the East India Company is shutting shop. It’s 2026. The East India Company in question was launched in London in 2010 by an Indian, Sanjiv Mehta, after he had bought the rights to the name. He opened a shop in Mayfair, the heart of affluent London, and traded in luxury food and drink items — including, inevitably, tea. Now, The Sunday Times of London has reported that the company has been placed into liquidation.After starting his company, Mehta was quoted as saying that he had reclaimed a symbol of colonial oppression for Indians and that “today’s East India Company is about compassion”. It may not have been the revenge that Bahadur Shah Zafar dreamt of — that the “sword of Hindustan” would “flash before the throne of London” — but irony, or at least money, can be its own reward.AdvertisementThe money, it appears, has run out. But is the real East India Company truly dead? Its name and the mercantilism it represents are often invoked as a reference point to understand the oligopolistic capital that, hand in hand with the state, increasingly dominates the world today. Its strange second life in London may be over, but the East India Company’s ghost may have moved to haunt Silicon Valley.