French merchant ships traversed the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and the northwestern coast of the Indian subcontinent.
[5] Additional state support was provided in the form of subsidies indexed to trading volume, 20-percent subsidization of the investment expenditure to create overseas ports, and free military protection.
[6] The company was granted a 50-year monopoly on French navigation and trade in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, a region stretching from the Cape of Good Hope eastward all the way to the Strait of Magellan.
The underlying intent was to establish a French entrepôt in Madagascar to rival the Dutch colony of Batavia,[2]: 34–35 but that plan was never realistic and the company gave up on it in 1668.
Already on 4 September 1666, an embassy sent by Louis XIV had secured a mandate from Emperor Aurangzeb that granted the company rights to trade in the major Mughal port of Surat,[2]: 35 withs similar customs privileges as the Dutch and English.
In 1685, the company was drastically restructured, and its governance further nationalized as the directors were henceforth chosen by the king among the shareholders instead of being elected, and the regional chambers were abolished.
[3] The first Director General for the Company was François de La Faye de La Martinie, who was adjoined by two Directors belonging to the two most successful trading organizations at that time: François Caron, who had spent 30 years working for the Dutch East India Company including in Japan from 1619 to 1641,[9]: 31 and Marcara Avanchintz, an Armenian trader from Isfahan, Persia.