Karam Chand Thapar & Bros. (Coal Sales)

Founded in 1929, as a coal mining company, today the KCT Group is one of India’s leading business conglomerates with interests in aquaculture, logistics and real estate. We pride ourselves on this process of diversification. Our rich legacy, our innate understanding of the markets we operate in and our ability to evolve to meet the changing needs of the increasingly globalized economy of India. As we look to the future and continue on this path of evolution our focus will be to deepen our core competence and build scale in our business lines; to increase customer orientation and thereby improve our value proposition to our customer base; and to be responsible corporate citizens and respond to the needs of the larger stakeholder community and the environment we operate in. Having gained some experience of the coal industry in his youth, Karam Chand set out to establish his own coal trading business based out of the Jharia coalfields in 1919. Soon thereafter, he realized that the epicenter of the coal business was not where the mines were located, but in Calcutta, the then established base of all the large European owned mining companies. A year later, in 1920, he set out for Calcutta, the erstwhile capital of India, where he began to establish contacts with other Indian businessmen with the aim of convincing them to rally against the British stranglehold over coal production and distribution in India.