Nathoo Premjee

Brief Profile

In the long, wind-swept corridors of Khoja history, a few lives feel larger than the page. They do not merely “succeed.” They move—across oceans, across empires, across the limits that others accept as fate.

Nathoo Premjee was one of those lives.

I encountered his name not in an archive, but through a human moment—by pure serendipity—when I met his grandson, Riazbhai Premjee, at the Khoja Heritage Day Live Stream in Karachi on October 26. As he spoke, I could sense it: this was not just family pride. This was the echo of an era when courage sailed in wooden hulls and opportunity smelled like salt air and risk. Born in 1865 in Draffa, Gujarat, Nathoo’s story begins in a small agricultural village—far from the bustle of ports, and far from the comfort of inherited advantage. But history often starts quietly. And then one day, it refuses to stay quiet.

Early Life: When Loss Became Fuel

At sixteen, Nathoo lost his father. Overnight, youth ended. Responsibility arrived without knocking.

Yet rather than shrinking under the weight, he did something rare: he moved toward change. Dissatisfied with the limits of village life, he persuaded his mother to leave Draffa and relocate to Porbandar, a port city with wider horizons. It was a decisive act—one that signaled a temperament we see in pioneers: when the world narrows, they widen the map.

In Porbandar, Nathoo caught the attention of Nassor Noor Mohammed, a prominent Khoja businessman from Zanzibar. Nathoo was taken under his wing, and by twenty, he had risen to manage operations in Bombay, that roaring engine of Indian Ocean commerce. Soon after, he was entrusted with opening a branch in Nosy Be—a sign not only of ability, but of trust.

And then came the moment every builder recognizes: the decision to step out from under a mentor’s shadow and build something that carries your own name.

In 1895, Nathoo founded Premjee & Fils in Madagascar.

Not a shop. Not a side venture. A serious enterprise—designed to endure.