On September 29, 1836, a meeting was held at the office of Binny & Co on Armenian Street, Madras, with 18 men attending it. Representatives of Arbuthnot, Binny and Parry (at that time Parry, Dare & Co) were part of the meeting. It was unanimously resolved that “an Association be formed in Madras under the designation of the Madras Chamber of Commerce”.
And, on October 11, 1836, the Government of Madras was informed of the establishment of the Chamber and permission was sought to “allow the Chamber to correspond direct with the different public departments and to permit the heads of those departments to furnish information”. The resolution was, in turn, placed before the Governor of Madras, Sir Frederick Adam, KCB, according to details documented in a coffee table book, ‘Championing Enterprise-175 Years of the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry,’ written by historian V. Sriram. And this is how the oldest chamber in Tamil Nadu and the country’s second chamber of commerce was born.
John Alves Arbuthnot took charge as the chamber’s first chairman and W.H. Hart of Binny as the secretary. Curiously, though the chamber had it headquarters and operations in Madras, it was always headed by a Britisher even after Independence.
