How did British influence in India begin?

The British presence in India began as a commercial enterprise: the British East India Company, a trading organization, had been active on the subcontinent since the early 1600s and, by the middle of the 1700s, had turned India into what historian Philip J. Stern calls "the company state." However, the 19th century witnessed the peak of Britain’s colonial era, when India was considered the crown jewel of a huge empire on which, as a contemporary phrase put it, "the sun never set."