The company’s first chapter opened more than 150 years ago. That’s when a merchant and his son—Khetsee and Devjee—from northwestern India migrated to the boomtown of Bombay where they planted the roots of their business. In 1868, one of Devjee’s sons and a business associate established an office in Rangoon of what was then Burma, and the GP Company became a bona fide business. Named after the two men, Gangjee Premjee & Co traded only in rice sourced from Burma, Vietnam and Thailand, which was then sold mainly to the Middle East and Africa for the first century or so.
In 1918, Gangjee Premjee & Co sowed new seeds by moving its operational base to the Thai capital of Bangkok. Premjee’s son Chimanlal was the only non-Chinese rice trader in the capital. In Thailand, the company’s meteoric rise owed much of its trajectory to his business acumen and ability to converse with Middle-Eastern and African customers in English.
The Premjee family later adopted the surname “Shah”—a Gujarati word meaning “merchant” or “trader”. Chimanlal then became widely known as “the Shah of Bangkok” for his hospitality and the way he never forgot his roots by extending an open-door policy to the local Indian community.
In 1976, Chimanlal’s only son, Kirit—then aged 22—was told by his father to circumnavigate the globe to meet present and future customers. Kirit returned from the trip convinced that the company’s reliance on a monoculture could yield far greater cash crops if they diversified. Thanks to his vision, Gangjee Premjee & Co began dealing in a wide variety of goods, services and agricultural products.
When Kirit took the reins of power, the company continued to diversify, from coal and steel to cooking oil and canned goods.
In the 1980s, Kirit started forming new companies, including the first Thai enterprise to manufacture raw pharmaceutical chemicals. He also helped to launch a new flagship: the Precious Shipping Ltd. (PSL). This fleet of freighters, laden with cargos of dry bulk, became the first dry bulk shipping company to sail its way onto the Stock Exchange of Thailand.
As Thailand’s economic boom sent reverberations into the 1990s, the G Premjee Company as it was now called, added real estate and construction ventures to its portfolio. The company erected residential high-rises as well as the Amari Atrium Hotel. Having a global vision paid handsome dividends, as joint ventures in other countries offered everything from diamond imports and jewellery design to bank cards, travel services and information technology. By 1996, G Premjee owned, or had interests, in over 150 different companies, so the group’s slogan at the time, “Enterprise Without Frontiers,” took on a world-class significance.
Although the 1997 Asian Economic Crisis affected the G Premjee Company as it did countless other businesses, the company—now called the GP Group—enjoyed a remarkable recovery.
Yet more triumphs followed. GP Group’s affiliated company Precious Shipping PCL is now Thailand's second largest shipping company, with 44 vessels and 18 more on the way. Its financial performance was ranked No. 1 internationally by the prestigious Marine Money magazine in 2006. Still sailing smoothly, PSL is making waves in crucial markets like China, India and the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the group’s other business ventures are also going full speed ahead. Mega LifeSciences was one such experiment. Begun as a small company producing gelatin capsules for the medical profession in the 1980s, it has spawned dozens of labs manufacturing close to a hundred different kinds of pharmaceuticals and nutritional supplements in 25 emerging countries, from Kazakhstan to Vietnam and Burma to Nigeria.
With great power comes an ever greater need for corporate social responsibility. So CSR has become synonymous with the GP Group. Examples of such responsible governance abound. Premthai Energy, for one, imports environmentally friendly coal from Indonesia to sell in Thailand. For another, Sila Eastern mines limestone in an ecologically friendly way, while Alva Aluminium manufactures aluminum from recycled scraps that are exported to India.
Always on the move, the high-flying company is Thailand's exclusive agent for India's premier airline, Jet Airways. Also taking flight in the new millennium was a chartered, executive jet service, with Bill Heinecke, head of Thailand's Minor Group, on board as co-pilot. In 2008, GP took a fashion tangent. Its new designer label for women, called Nsha, a slightly abbreviated Sanskrit word that means "intoxicated," also evokes the name of Kirit's oldest daughter, Nishita Shah, who joined the company after finishing her studies in the United States.
As the Group’s Managing Director, she is determined to make the GP Group a global brand by enhancing the profiles of its affiliated companies around the world. Nishita is the public face of the GP Group. In 2007, the young and photogenic Nishita captured the public eye, and snagged a few covers, after Forbes Asia put her on their 20 richest people list for Thailand.
Under the guidance of the experienced Kirit, as Chairman, complemented by the boundless energy and vision of Nishita, the GP Group is ready to write plenty of new chapters in its long-running epic of success.