The Danish East India Company was a Danish chartered company

Chartered company

A chartered company is an association formed by investors or shareholders for the purpose of trade, exploration and colonization.- History :...

.
It was founded in 1616, following a privilege of Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 King Christian IV.
It was focused on trade with India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 and had its base in Tranquebar

Tranquebar

Tharangambadi is a panchayat town in Nagapattinam district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, 15 km north of Karaikal, near the mouth of a distributary of the Kaveri River. Its name means "place of the singing waves"...

, in the fort Dansborg, the seat of its governor (see indirect rule

Indirect rule

Indirect rule was a system of government that was developed in certain British colonial dependencies...

) of Danish India

Danish India

Danish India is a term for the former colonies of Denmark, and until 1814 Denmark–Norway, in India. The colonies included the town of Tranquebar in present-day Tamil Nadu state, Serampore in present-day West Bengal, and the Nicobar Islands, currently part of India's union territory of the Andaman...

, who was styled Opperhoved. During its heyday, the Danish East India Company and Swedish East India Company

Swedish East India Company

The Swedish East India Company was founded in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1731 for the purpose of conducting trade with the Far East...

 imported more tea than the British East India Company

British East India Company

The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...

 and smuggled 90 percent of it into Britain

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....

, where it could be sold at a huge profit.

After a short blossoming, it lost importance quickly and was dissolved in 1729.