Through adroit use of its well-trained, disciplined armies, over the course of the eighteenth century the East India Company expanded its influence inland from the three littoral “Presidencies” of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. By the 1750s, William Dalrymple tells us in The Anarchy, his new account of the rise of the company, it accounted for almost an eighth of Britain’s total imports and contributed nearly a third of a million pounds to the home exchequer in annual customs duties.
Source : The Pillage of India
