NOVEL NEXT Chapter 1038: 50 Billion
Day by day, the territories that used to be the frontiers of the Bharatiya Empire, and now subsidiary kingdoms under the empire, began to change.
Before, if these territories were like an extension of the Bharatiya Empire without any mind of their own, now, with the appointment of the Kings, the subsidiary kingdoms felt like they had their own soul.
One thing that happened after the major military figure shifted from the Bharatiya Empire to their own kingdoms is that their businesses also shifted. Ramayya Senapathi, Yogendra Singh, Gangadhar Nayak, and others, even including Raja Jayadwaj Singha, had to shift their business to their own kingdoms, and this shift naturally brought in a lot of complications.
Being at the top of the food chain in the Bharatiya Empire for so long, they had their hands in almost every part of society. Take King Jayadwaj Singha, he ran not only a leading construction company, but also a major bank, one of only five in the empire. That same bank had underwritten countless companies to go public, and, for God's sake, was even a founding member of the Kolkata Stock Exchange. On top of that, Singha managed a network of educational institutions ranging from schools, colleges, and even a 1st tier university, the University of Ahom. And now he had to give it all up, because in the Bharatiya Empire, foreign capital in domestic education was strictly forbidden.
Although helpless, becoming the king of Nagapura, he shifted most of his critical business from the Bharatiya Empire to his kingdom. He even sold off all the properties of his educational institutes and only retained the trademark of his brand, and managed to retain a large number of teachers and managerial faculty. He would rebuild everything after he established the same institutions in his kingdom.
Thankfully, he had already made preparations for such a day after his majesty had informed him a few years ago, when he, along with others, were given the chance to choose their own frontiers. Following the suggestion of his majesty, he completely split apart the Bank of Ahom into two different companies, one the Bank of Ahom Bharatiya Empire Branch, and the Bank of Ahom, which will be the headquarters based out of Nagapura.
The same would go for his other industries, where the ones already in the empire will be converted into subsidiaries, and a new headquarters will be established in Nagapura.
The only pity is that all the military contracts these companies had with the government had to be dissolved, but this was one of the prices Jayadwaj Singha had to pay. Although helpless, he had no choice but to accept it.
As for Gangadhar Nayak, Yogendra Singh, and others who had their own military design firms with contracts in the Bharatiya Empire, their situation was much more complicated, because military design firms are a sensitive industry, so Vijay did not allow them to be established outside or even their branches to exist anywhere else. So, although reluctant, Gangadhar and Yogendra Singh, as well as others, decided to sell the military design firms to the interested parties and invested in procuring industrial tools instead.
Although to some extent there are manufacturing companies in all the frontiers of the Bharatiya Empire, it is only at the basic level, and only at the level where simple carriages, agricultural tools, and cold weapons could be produced. None of the frontiers even had the ability to manufacture a factory-issue last-generation Shakthi rifle (Brown Bess), so all the kings, already being aware of the importance of industry to a country, immediately started to develop the industrial capabilities of their individual kingdoms.
This is where the money they had accumulated for a long time came into play. Orders for machine tools and production plants poured into Sriranga Industrial Tools by the hundreds, and the campaigns to attract the Bharatiyas to settle in the kingdoms became much more intense.
Naturally, to develop a country, one's own wealth is definitely not enough, so along with the wealth all the kings had accumulated over the years, large amounts of mineral resources poured into the empire as payment for industrial goods.
This created a virtuous cycle. Varaha poured into the market, creating jobs and swelling the pockets of the middle class, which in turn drove up consumption. From the southeast, vast quantities of minerals flowed into the Bharatiya Empire, fueling the manufacture of industrial goods. These goods were immediately absorbed by the newly opened territories, generating more wealth, which again spurred expansion, jobs, and markets, and the cycle repeated.
Everywhere across the Bharatiya Empire, in every major economic zone, be it the iron and steel economic zone of Gangapuri, the marble and cement manufacturing industrial zone of Paramarapuri, the textile industrial zone in Palanagari, or the shipbuilding industrial zones of Cheranadu, Cholapuri, Vijayanagara, and Anuradhapuri.
In these zones, the skies were dark, as if entire cities were swallowed by storm clouds. The putrid stench of coal and sulphur clung to the air, sharp in the nostrils of all who passed through. Yet no one frowned. To them, this was not pollution but prosperity.
The factories ran like engines burning on an endless supply of nitrous and oxygen, working faster than reckoning, producing more than the warehouses could hold. Streets teemed with people, hurrying, hauling, shouting, trading.
The rush was so unrelenting that even if a varaha coin fell to the ground, no one had the time to pick it up. It was as if the people of the Bharatiya Empire had encountered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Everyone was making huge amounts of money, and an atmosphere of restlessness had begun to form in the major industrial cities across the empire. People began to truly equate time with money, spending each and every waking moment accumulating wealth.
Driven by this huge amount of productivity that blew up out of nowhere, the logistical network of the Bharatiya Empire was heavily challenged. Roads in all the manufacturing-based industrial zones were packed with large carriages transporting goods from the factories, either to a distributor or to a port where they would be shipped to the Southeast.
There was so much demand that temporarily all the passenger trains had to be stopped, and all the trains in the vicinity of the industrial zones had to be converted into cargo carriers.
As the saying goes, "Necessity is the greatest teacher of invention," so due to the urgency of the situation, a new innovation was brought to light.
In order to save time, VRL Logistics, one of the premier logistics companies of the empire, began a new approach. They removed the entire body of the train cargo carriage and placed a full shipping container directly on the carriage bed and bolted it down. The bed, with the container on top, could then be lifted straight from the train and placed onto a ship. This innovation drastically reduced the time and effort involved in transferring goods between rail and sea transport.
Other logistics companies quickly took note and began to adopt the same method, recognising its efficiency. At the same time, locomotive manufacturing companies saw an opportunity in this shift. They started producing standardised, container-compatible locomotive beds, ensuring that future trains could seamlessly handle shipping containers, further streamlining the empire's trade and transport network.
With this new innovation, the whole logistical chain of the Bharatiya Empire became much simpler. It reached the point where if a manufacturer packed the goods in a container, the container was only opened after it reached one of the subsidiary kingdoms in Southeast Asia. There was no need for anyone to open the container apart from security checks in the middle, saving a lot of time and energy while simultaneously boosting efficiency.
Also, because of this, the orders for specially built ships that are capable of carrying a large number of containers increased drastically, boosting the businesses of all the major shipyards of the empire.
Rail and road were not the only modes of transportation that had become extremely busy due to the boom in demand. Waterways, too, were overflowing with traffic across the empire. Wherever industrial zones existed, the nearby rivers and canals became crowded as well. People quickly realised that transporting goods by boat offered a shortcut, saving several hours compared to land routes. The Great Southern Bharatiya Canal, cutting across the southern part of the subcontinent and connecting the Arabian Sea with the Bay of Bengal, had become especially congested, bustling with constant movement.
Sailing ships that used the wind had almost been eliminated in the canal because, with the introduction of paddle wheel ships powered by the newer Kesari Engines, the need for raising and lowering the level of water in order for movement had been completely eliminated, and hundreds of paddle ships could be seen going into and out of the canal every moment.
The people getting into and out of the ships every moment at a major port across the canal was like a flood.
If the situation of the Bharatiya Empire had to be described in a word, then only the word prosperity could describe it, with everyone being busy accumulating wealth or on the way to accumulating wealth.
The two stock exchanges of the empire, the Mangaluru Stock Exchange and the Kolkata Stock Exchange, were enough to show the prosperity of the empire. In a matter of days, the stocks rose by over 10%, reaching an unprecedented valuation of 4.5 billion Varaha for the Mangaluru Stock Exchange and 4 billion Varaha for the Kolkata Stock Exchange.
Newly listed companies, legacy corporations, dark horses that appeared out of nowhere, and even loss-making firms, all types of companies, regardless of their past performance, experienced an incredible surge in their share prices amidst the tide of prosperity. Mahabali Enterprises' stock rose from 3,542 Varaha to 4,325, Himalayan Group climbed from 1,625 to 2,800, and Dynasty Corporation surged to 78,600 Varaha from 71,765. Aakarsh Carriages finally broke through the 1.5-billion-Varaha mark, becoming one of the very few companies in the Empire Stock Exchanges with a valuation exceeding 1.5 billion.
Mineral companies like Kombay Minerals and Jyothi Minerals saw increases of at least 10%, while steel producers, directly benefiting from the industrial boom, recorded rises of over 20%. Tata Ironworks, for example, jumped from a valuation of 500 million Varaha to 800 million within just a month, well on its way to joining the exclusive one-billion-Varaha club.
Even sectors seemingly unrelated to the industrial surge felt the ripple effect. Textile manufacturers such as Hima and Joshi Textile saw a 5% rise, while Bakshi Textiles Group climbed 8%. Food companies, particularly those in canned and fast food, also enjoyed remarkable growth: M and M Food Company surged 12%, and Gauri Putra Canning Factory rose 9%. Across the board, the Empire's stock markets reflected the unstoppable momentum of economic expansion.
The projections for the Empire's gross domestic product reached a staggering 50 billion Varaha, making Jagannath Mohan wake up laughing from ear to ear.