UAE: The East India Company is examining the possibility of entering the Middle East’s serviced apartment sector.
Company chairman and owner Sanjiv Mehta said: “We are looking at mixed use developments and hopefully look at moving towards hospitality serviced apartments. That is the next area in which we want to focus. We don’t know the timeline as they are highly intensive deals and you need the right partner so we are in the process of putting that together… But each business will operate separate from each other.”
The East India Company was set up in 1600 in London and resurrected after 131 years in 2005. Established as part of a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, at its peak the company reportedly employed a third of the whole British workforce, accounted for around half of the world’s trade and dominated commodities such as cotton, silk, salt and tea.
Dissolved by Queen Victoria’s government in 1874, the brand was resurrected in 2005 and now has outlets in the Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, as well as stores in Covent Garden and Oxford Street. It has also expanded into Norway, Finland, Austria, The Netherlands, France, Spain and Germany, as well as other countries across Asia and Australia.
www.theeastindiacompany.com</p
