Discover the finest collection of carpets in Bangalore and Chennai at Carpet Kingdom, offering an unparalleled selection.
Amritsar, circa the 1900s, where Ali Mohammed Jan, our founder began, by going door-to-door selling fine woolen carpets from his home state, Kashmir.
How We Began
“Carpetwala! Carpetwala!”. The Amritsar streets in the early 1900s echoed with the calls of young Ali Mohammed Jan who’d come from his home state, Kashmir, to better his prospects and make a name for himself. While he fared well here, he heard things were even better, further South, especially Bangalore, to where he eventually came and, later, to Coonoor in the Nilgiris.
These were places with official mansions and clubhouses to be furnished, with carpets like the fine handwoven Kashmiri ones Ali carried, which soon became sought after by army and government officers and affluent householders.
Ali Mohammed Jan, in his later years, in Bangalore.
Established In The South
Driven to succeed, he returned again and again, his eye becoming more discerning and his understanding of what his customers wanted more acute – and his business and reputation grew. This was our beginning, our heritage and inspiration.
By early 1920, Ali Mohammed’s younger son Mohamed Jan had joined him on his pheris, his rounds, of Bangalore’s streets. Mohammed, fiercely motivated like his father, ventured further afield, to Sri Lanka, (then, Ceylon). The years passed and some of the best hand-knotted woollen carpets from their homeland also came to adorn homes and establishments all over the South and across the Palk Strait.
Young Aslam Jan outside Kashmir Warehouse, the first store, on Commercial Street.
Kashmir Warehouse
After Partition, Mohammed Jan settled his family in Bangalore, the city of his most successful endeavours, the city Carpet Kingdom calls home. In 1950, his eldest son Aslam joined in, and Mohammed Jan took the next major step and opened his first shop in Bangalore’s busiest shopping thoroughfare, Commercial Street. They called it Kashmir Warehouse and it soon established itself, also for other fine carpets from elsewhere in India and abroad. Apart from these, it also sold wooden, brass and textile craft objects.
Customers flocked to Kashmir Warehouse and in 1958, Aslam, now joined by his siblings Azam and Asgar, opened a second store on Commercial Street, Bangalore Carpet Palace, the city’s first showroom exclusively for rugs and fine carpets.
Janson Carpet Palace. Aslam Jan with On the right is the Honourable B.D. Jatti, former Vice-President of India and former Chief Minister of the then Mysore State.
Commercial Street
The collection was extended to include Persian and other traditional carpets, intricate, impeccably woven masterpieces, in rare silks as well as in wool. It was now the 60s, faster in pace, and more demanding: a new consumer sensibility Aslam Jan responded to with more avantgarde designs and a new direction: manufacturing machine-made carpets.
A visionary, like his father and grandfather, he planned to diversify and extend, beyond Bangalore, around the country and even abroad. He opened Jansons Carpets and Furnishings, a 6,000-square-foot store, the largest at the time largest in Bangalore or India.
Inauguration, Janson Carpet Palace.
Integrated Offering
Then it was the mid-seventies and the next generation stepped forward. Aslam’s son Akmal began by adding design and customization to the Carpet Kingdom service palette. For Akmal, design was the logical value addition to the process of creating a masterpiece for a customer.
It began first with having carpets hand-knotted in Elluru in Andhra Pradesh, a centre of carpet weaving and Akmal also brought in weavers from Wallajah outside Chennai, noted for its silk weaving.
Bhadoi, UP, circa 1981, at the factory where a hand-knotted woolen carpet commissioned for a client, Prince’s Restaurant, Bangalore, was being finished.
Reaching Out
A decade later, in the Eighties, our base in Bangalore was well-established, and our definitive product-and-service palette unmatched by any other in the South. Our growing client list was thus being well served but since it extended across the region, we thought it time to resume our Founder’s mission of reaching out and taking our products and services closer to them. And so we opened our first showroom in Chennai on Anna Salai, the city’s main thoroughfare, to which they, and many more came, to take home masterpieces to call their own.
Malsa Carpets and Furnishings, the store started by Akmal Jan in 1998.
A New Initiative: Carpet Kingdom
In 1998, in Bangalore, Akmal launched his own retail space in Dispensary Road, parallel to Commercial Street. He called it Carpet Kingdom, in tribute to his father, Aslam, who used the signoff ‘Carpet King’ in the days when much business communication was by telegram. The new initiative flourished and in the early 2000s, we shifted to larger premises – our present location in Indiranagar, in 1st Main Road, 2nd Stage, Domlur.
Here, Carpet Kingdom sprawls over 12,000 square feet, on four floors, in a building we’ve completely remodeled with a showroom on two floors with over 4,000 rugs and fine carpets. On the floors above are a design studio, as well as a customizing studio where clients can personalize a rug or fine carpet from over 500 samples and specify everything from yarns and colors to textures and finishes. We plan to add another 2,500 square feet by the end of 2023.
The Carpet Kingdom flagship, today, Indiranagar, Bangalore.
Now, Ahead
Today, twenty-five years after Akmal Jan created it, Carpet Kingdom is the corporate brand we manufacture and retail under, at this our flagship store and our Chennai branch, providing retail, professional, and institutional clients all over India with our fine carpets and rugs, as well as with the custom design and support services that, all together, characterise the Carpet Kingdom experience.
More stores are planned, nationwide and then, abroad. Akmal and his sons, Ali and Hamza, the fifth generation, create solutions for their clients – householders, collectors, corporates and institutions, and the design fraternity – just as their forefathers did. The focus never wavers design and quality, heritage and innovation, born of a legacy of over one hundred and twenty-five years that resonates with the direct, eloquent invitation – ‘Take home a masterpiece.’’