About Us

134 Years On.....

E. J. Motiwalla & Co was established in 1886 in Penang by Esufali Jaffarbhai Motiwalla, a merchant from Surat, India.

From its origins as an Import-Export Company trading mainly with India and Burma, E. J. Motiwalla & Co settled to the supply of Stationery and Paper Products to companies and government departments in Penang.

The Singapore office was set up within a couple of years. There is an advertisement on 12th April 1889 in the Singapore newspapers for the sale of 2 Gentleman's Bicycles and the addresss of the company then was 19 Malacca Street.

The Kuala Lumpur office was established in the late 1950s at the direction of Mr. Saleh Kayumbhai Motiwalla and his nephew Mr. Abuli Huseini Motiwalla, in his early 20s then and having just arrived from Surat, was charged with running the office.

In the 1960s, the company changed its focus to selling Technical Stationery and Drawing Office Equipment bringing in such famed brands as Ravena, Harper & Turnstall, Multitec, AEL, Diazit and Sihl.

Surveying instruments (Kern & Pentax); Small Survey Tools and Precision Measuring Equipment (Suunto, Haglof, Ushikata) for use in forestry and agriculture were subsequently added.

E. J. Motiwalla & Co (Malaysia) supplied some of the earliest Analogue Mapping Systems to the Survey Department of Malaysia and subsequently Malaysia's first Digital Mapping System to the UTM in Johor Bahru. To this day, the Malaysian offices continue to be active in the field of Geomatics.

With CAD replacing manual drafting, we were amongst the first in bringing in Ink Jet and Electrostatic Papers and in subsequent years added Digital Reprographic Systems to replace the analogue ammonia plan-printers.

As sign makers embraced digital technology, Wide Format Lamination equipment and specialty print materials were added to service this new emerging market segment.

In recent years, with growing emphasis on the digitization of a large volume of Documents, Books, Fine Art, Heritage Documents, Technical Drawings, Newspapers, Maps, Memory Collectibles etc. E. J. Motiwalla & Co has put together a range of Specialty Scanners and Software and offers specialized Scanning Services for the digitization of the above.

We have supplied our specialty scanners for their archive and digitization projects to the National Archives of Singapore, National Library of Singapore, National Archives of Malaysia, National Art Museum of Malaysia (Seni Lukis), National Library of Indonesia and State Archives of Sarawak, several Universities, government departments, Service Bureaus and Reprographic Companies providing digitization services to corporations in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

E. J. Motiwalla & Co continues to look for new business opportunities to meet the ever changing market.

The company is owned and managed by the third and fourth generation of the children of the founder Esufali Jaffarbhai Motiwalla.