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Bola Thimmappa Kamath (1885-1961) was the founder of our organisation during the early 20th century when most of India was passing through bullock cart age.
btk began as a small company, but quickly grew into one of the largest suppliers of rice, cashew nuts, pepper, cinnamon, shikakai (used in natural soap), kokam phool (spice), nux vomica (used in pharmaceuticals), ram patra as well as a host of other agricultural products.
One may be surprised to learn that he was sourcing to the market at least thirty strains of rice in white and boiled variety, with exquisite taste, now mostly extinct.
Those were the days when India did not have the automobiles, communications and roads. Bullock carts were the only transports available as cargo service and horse carts for the passengers. Hundreds of bullock carts were waiting for their turn to clear the cargo at the warehouse every day after the culmination of their transit from areas 100s of km from the interiors of erstwhile Dakshina Kannada, North Kanara and Shimoga.
He exported ship loads of rice to gulf countries from Mulki port of Dakshina Kannada district, of erstwhile Madras Province through his agents based in Calicut. By far, he was the largest supplier of rice in this part of India till 1925. That was the time when cashew business had first started and took the cause of cashew along with other forest produce. Thus being instrumental in invigorating the economic activity of the district. He also ventured to processing activity whenever there was a glut in the raw cashew nut market, thus imparted the fusibility of the Cashew Processing Ideas to the next generations. He established a healthy business culture and earned immense of goodwill for the entire Bola Family. So much so the word “Bola” now deemed vehemently synonymous for cashews.
We are proud of him and grateful to him for being beneficiaries of his dynamism entrepreneurship, venturesome nature which has given us a better start. |
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