From a banyan tree to Dalal Street: the 151-year story of how the BSE began

The Bombay Stock Exchange, home to the Sensex and the heartbeat of India’s stock market, turns 151 this year. Long before trading apps, blinking screens and lightning-fast transactions, the exchange’s story began with paper ledgers, firm handshakes and shouted bids.

It started over a century and a half ago with Premchand Roychand, a young broker who would go on to become one of the pioneers of India’s stock market. Along with a handful of fellow brokers, Roychand met beneath the shade of a sprawling banyan tree near Mumbai’s Town Hall, where they traded shares and struck deals. As business gathered pace, the group moved from one location to another before finally settling on the street that would become synonymous with India’s financial markets: Dalal Street.

On July 9, 1875, the brokers came together to establish The Native Share & Stock Brokers’ Association, laying the foundation for what is now the Bombay Stock Exchange. Back then, there were only a few hundred investors, deals were struck face-to-face, and a person’s word carried as much weight as a signed contract.

Few could have imagined that this small association would one day grow into one of the world’s oldest stock exchanges, home to thousands of listed companies and trillions of rupees in market capitalisation, with paper ledgers eventually giving way to silent servers, algorithmic trading and transactions completed in microseconds.