Kutch was a princely state that included Bhuj, Anjar, Lakhpath, and Mandvi. The Kutchi Memons are now spread all over the globe with concentrated populations in
Mumbai
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Pune
Pune (; ; also known as Poona, (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million ...
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Mysore
Mysore (), officially Mysuru (), is a city in the southern part of the state of Karnataka, India. Mysore city is geographically located between 12° 18′ 26″ north latitude and 76° 38′ 59″ east longitude. It is located at an altitude of ...
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Bangalore
Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...
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Chennai
Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...
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Cannanore
Kannur (), formerly known in English as Cannanore, is a city and a municipal corporation in the state of Kerala, India. It is the administrative headquarters of the Kannur district and situated north of the major port city and commercial hu ...
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Tellicherry
Thalassery (), formerly Tellicherry, is a municipality, Commercial City on the Malabar Coast in Kannur district, in the state of Kerala, India, bordered by the districts of Mahé (Pondicherry), Kozhikode, Wayanad, Kasaragod and Kodagu (Karna ...
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Calicut
Kozhikode (), also known in English as Calicut, is a city along the Malabar Coast in the state of Kerala in India. It has a corporation limit population of 609,224 and a metropolitan population of more than 2 million, making it the second la ...
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Kochi
Kochi (), also known as Cochin ( ) ( the official name until 1996) is a major port city on the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea, which is a part of the Arabian Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of K ...
Trivandrum
Thiruvananthapuram (; ), also known by its former name Trivandrum (), is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. It is the most populous city in Kerala with a population of 957,730 as of 2011. The encompassing urban agglomeration populati ...
Kayamkulam
Kayamkulam is a town and municipality in the ''Onattukara'' region of Alappuzha district in Kerala. It is the second biggest town in Alappuzha district. It is located on the western coast of India, and was an ancient maritime trading center. O ...
Ooty
Ooty (), officially known as Udhagamandalam (also known as Ootacamund (); abbreviated as Udhagai), is a city and a municipality in the Nilgiris district of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located north west of Coimbatore and so ...
, Aurangabad, Maharashtra
Kutchi Memons have the surname Sait (for men) and Bai (for women), although there are Saits among Punjabis too. Bai is a common appellation in northern India for women in high positions, e.g., Rani Lakshmi Bai.
The first families that migrated to Travancore (now central and south Kerala) were called Sett, a vulgarisation of the appellation Seth or Saith - rich man - by the Tamil-oriented Travancoreans. The title got further skewed phonetically, by the Turkish oriented Pathans then in administration to Sait (there are also Saits in Turkey). Sait then became a surname for them and their children. They spread from Travancore to other states, though a few families joined them directly from Kutchch afterwards. After independence many families migrated from Kutch to Pakistan, but migration from South India was very insignificant, and whoever migrated retained the title Sait and are understood to be migrants via South.
Kutchi Memons have mostly been in business, ranging from large trading houses down to road side hawkers, but with the new generation this trend is changing. The community has a very modern outlook and most individuals are educated. The community is very peculiar about its unique identity and in some pockets marriage outside the community is still looked upon unkindly, though in Kerala nearly 95% of Memons can no longer claim pure blood - at least three generations have crossed with native Muslims. The written Language had been Gujarati for long, migrants into Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra speak Urdu but it is slowly changing from
Sunni
Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagr ...
Hanafi
The Hanafi school ( ar, حَنَفِية, translit=Ḥanafiyah; also called Hanafite in English), Hanafism, or the Hanafi fiqh, is the oldest and one of the four traditional major Sunni schools ( maddhab) of Islamic Law (Fiqh). It is named aft ...
Islamic tradition but with somewhat different practices remnant of the old Kutchi traditions modified by local customs.