Our History

In January 1886 a pair of enterprising businessmen, David Thomas Shaw and Charles William Wallace, set up Shaw Wallace & Co in a modest premises in the heart of the business district in Calcutta and so began the chequered history of the Company and the honoured tradition that their successors have  preserved with great care and perseverance, protected and even endeavoured to enhance over the decades

‘A History of Shaw Wallace & Co and Shaw Wallace & Co Ltd’ written by an old Shaw Wallace hand, Harry Townsend, and commissioned and published in 1965 records that, ” In 1886 Mr David Shaw was joined by Mr C W Wallace and they were free to start afresh in Calcutta where on 1st of January that year the new firm opened its doors under the name of Shaw Wallace & Co.”

Mr Townsend continues in to inform us that, “At first the partners were not fortunate. The piece goods man ran off with an Australian actress and robbed the till in doing so. A year or two later the tea expert played the firm false and yet again the till suffered depredation. Meanwhile the silk buyer was discovered by myself raising money for himself from shipments of the firm’s silk.”Amidst such inauspicious beginnings was born an icon of British commercial expansion.
And 3 decades later Shaw Wallace was truly a serious name to be conjured with..

Shortly after India’s independence from Great Britain and its partition into India and Pakistan in 1947, British shareholdings were bought out by local businessmen and 2 separate companies, Shaw Wallace India Limited and Shaw Wallace Pakistan Limited, were born and continued to thrive.

This state of affairs continued until 1972 when Bangladesh achieved independence from Pakistan following an armed struggle. At that point, a small group of businessmen led by Mr Rezaur Rahman FCA, Founder-Partner of Rahman Rahman Huq (KPMG), the oldest firm of Chartered Accountants in Bangladesh, acquired the Bangladeshi assets of the Company from the Government of Bangladesh in an auction process and Shaw Wallace Bangladesh Limited came into existence.

By 2002 Mr Rezaur Rahman bought up all shares and became the sole owner of Shaw Wallace Bangladesh Ltd. Mr Rahman  who was a great philanthropist never took dividends and made Shaw Wallace and its subsidiaries donate their profits to A F Mujibur Rahman Foundation, a charitable trust that he founded in 1985 after the name of his father late A F Mujibur Rahman ICS and is run by a Board of Trustee comprising members of Rahman family , the Shaw Wallace MD and few other eminent citizens.

Mr Rezaur Rahman passed away in London on 01 July 2015 due to old age complications.