Sumati Morarjee was the “Admiral of the Indian Merchant Navy” at a time when women were not even allowed on docks w/o a male escort.
In the 1920s & 30s, British shipping companies like P&O had a firewall around Indian ports. They used a predatory pricing strategy called deferred rebates. If an Indian merchant used an Indian ship just once, the British would cancel all their previous discounts, effectively bankrupting them.
Sumati (who took over the reins of Scindia Steam Navigation at just 23 yrs old) realized this was not a business war; it was a Network War. She began building a loyalty mesh. She convinced Indian merchants that using Indian ships was a nationalist code, a way to keep Indian wealth within the local server.
Most people know that Srila Prabhupada went to New York with $7 & a crate of books to start ISKCON. But the Back-end Sponsor was Sumati. Prabhupada approached her multiple times. Her managers said no because he was an elderly man with no money & a history of heart issues, a High Risk Passenger. Sumati looked past the Risk Assessment. She felt his mission was a form of cultural export. She personally overrode her board & issued him a free ticket on the cargo ship Jaladuta.
She grew the Scindia fleet to 43 massive ships. She pioneered the Training Ship concept (the Dufferin). She realized that if Indians did not know how to navigate, they would always be users & never administrators of their own waters. She turned a generation of Indian youth into world-class sailors.
She was elected the President of the Indian National Shipowners’ Association multiple times & was the 1st woman ever to head the International Shipping Federation in London, the very Server Room of the people who once tried to block her.
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