A BIT ABOUT US

The inspiration for RE arose in 1937 when two local entrepreneurs Abdul Samad and Kaku Babu were working with the only auction house of Calcutta at the time, Mackenzie Lyall & Co.

The story goes that Abdul Samad was successful in a bid at an auction for a car that he got for 2,000 rupees without a penny in his pocket. A chance meeting with a member of the Bengali royal family who could not make it in time to bid for the car in auction led to Abdul turning a large profit and thus forth establishing the required finances to start an auction house with Kaku Babu in 1940. Subsequently the shop was taking over by Samad’s eldest son Abdul Majed Mehrotra and Kaku’s heir apparent nephew, Amritlal Laljee

RE  has seen the rise and fall of the British empire. The pre independent Indian period. The regime of Raja’s & Nawabs from Bengal. After the British and  European embassies shifted to the capital of Delhi taking away Calcutta’s capital status, the  Bengali royal families emerged as our major clientele. The subsequent decades led to ups and downs in the trade with  RE weathering  many a storm be it through change of consumer attitudes to the rise of the world wide web and the rise of India’s middle class.