In the beginnings of the City of Madras go back to the earliest stages of English commercial enterprise in India. The English East India Company was started in 1600. The growth of these suburbs indicates a period of great prosperity in the cotton trade, which was the chief investment of the Company. The Dubashes and chief merchants of the Company engaged in the supply of cotton goods to the Company rose to great prosperity. Sunkurama had a large garden in the bend of the Cooum river south of Periamet which was taken over in 1735 for a new weavers' village known as Chintadripettah ( In olden day it was called as chinna thari pettai ). By that time Sunkurama had fallen into disgrace and was succeeded by his colleague Thambu Chetty as the chief merchant. Government resolved in October 1734 to erect a weaving town in the site of Sunkurama's garden and to permit only spinners, weavers, washers, painters and the necessary attendants of the temple to settle in the village. A cowl was granted on these terms and Bemala Audiappa Narayana helped in the peopling of the village, which grew to contain nearly two hundred and fifty families within two years after its foundation.