Bombay Stock Exchange was founded by Premchand Roychand. He was one of the most influential businessmen in 19th-century Bombay. A man who made a fortune in the stockbroking business and came to be known as the Cotton King, the Bullion King or just the Big Bull. He was also the founder of the Native Share and Stock Brokers Association, an institution that is now known as the BSE.
While BSE Ltd is now synonymous with Dalal Street, it was not always so. The first venue of the earliest stock broker meetings in the 1850s was in rather natural environs – under banyan trees – in front of the Town Hall, where Horniman Circle is now situated. A decade later, the brokers moved their venue to another set of foliage, this time under banyan trees at the junction of Meadows Street and what is now called Mahatma Gandhi Road. As the number of brokers increased, they had to shift from place to place, but they always overflowed to the streets. At last, in 1874, the brokers found a permanent place, and one that they could, quite literally, call their own. The new place was, aptly, called Dalal Street (Brokers’ Street).