Well known as wine sellers amongst Guwahatians, did you know that the establishment originally started off as a departmental store?
Located in Cotton University Road, Panbazar in Guwahati BN Dey and Co was established in 1861 by Gopal Chandra Bangopadhyay.
Gopinath Nailonkar, a school superintendent of a Sanskrit Tol in Calcutta, first came to Assam in 1810 from Howrah. To settle in Assam with landed property, Nailonkar was financially supported by his friend BN Dey, with the condition that the property continues to remain in his name. Hence, the name, “BN Dey and Co.”
The Bangopadhyay family also owns two tea estates in Noonmati, the Sunsali Noonmati Tea Estate and the Tepesia Tea Estate. Reportedly, even the refinery land belonged to them. BN Dey also has a branch in Shillong.
The departmental store catered mostly to the British officials and their families apart from selling books.
Liquor was added much later on the British customers’ advice. The original liquor licence was issued in 1861, making BN Dey the first wine merchant of northeast India. Stocks used to be procured from Calcutta by ship.
However, after independence, the old licence had to be surrendered for a new one, issued in 1964.
Pranab Kumar Banerjee, the present proprietor of the business, started helping his father Durga Charan Banerjee since his school days in 1957. Surprisingly, the oldest liquor trader of Guwahati is a teetotaller. “I started working since I was in Class VIII and was paid Rs. 50 as salary by my mother. In the 1960s, our daily sale was around Rs. 1,500 per day, which was good during that time.”
In 1931, the company added newspapers to its list of merchandize. The establishment came to be known as “BN Dey & Co, Wine and Newspaper Merchants.” The Statesman, The Times of India, and Indian Express were some of the first papers to be sold.
Pranab Banerjee, popularly known as Khokon Da, fondly recalls, “We used to earn around Rs. 15 lakhs per month from newspaper sales. Now it is hardly Rs. 1 lakh. Demand for newspapers and magazines were so high, we used to ration out equally to retailers. A paper cost around 22 paisa only.” They were the sole distributors of the Sunday magazine published by The Telegraph.
Pranab Kumar Banerjee also established Candida Enterprise, the oldest drug distributor of the region.
The shop is still housed in the old Assam type house. Although most of the old building has been renovated, the original Australian roofs are still preserved by the family.
The Banerjee Family owns most of the area around the shop, around 17,000 sq feet area, including the historic Nagkota Pukhuri that was later donated to the Fishery Department.
