Kochi, previously Cochin, city and significant port on the Malabar Shore of the Bedouin Ocean, west-focal Kerala state, southwestern India. Likewise the name of a previous regal state, "Kochi" is in some cases used to allude to a group of islands and towns, including Ernakulam, Mattancheri, Post Cochin, Willingdon Island, Vypin Island, and Gundu Island. The metropolitan agglomeration incorporates the territories of Trikkakara, Eloor, Kalamassery, and Trippunithura. Kochi was a unimportant fishing town until, in the fourteenth 100 years, the backwaters of the Bedouin Ocean and the streams plunging from the Western Ghats toward the east caused the detachment of the town from the central area, transforming the landlocked harbor into perhaps of the most secure port on India's southwestern coast. The port expected another essential significance and started to encounter business flourishing. At the point when the Portuguese entered the Indian Sea in the late fifteenth hundred years and arrived at India's southwestern coast, the Portuguese pilot Pedro Álvares Cabral established the main European settlement on Indian soil at Kochi in 1500. Vasco da Gama, pioneer of the ocean course to India (1498), laid out the primary Portuguese processing plant (exchanging station) there in 1502, and the Portuguese emissary Afonso de Albuquerque fabricated the first European post in Quite a while there in 1503. The city stayed a Portuguese belonging until it was vanquished by the Dutch in 1663. Much Portuguese design actually exists in the city. Under Dutch rule (1663-1795) Kochi had its most noteworthy thriving. Through its harbor were delivered pepper, cardamom, and different flavors and medications as well as coir, coconut, and copra. Every one of the city's ethnic and strict gatherings, including its Hindu larger part and the Muslim, Syrian Christian, and Jewish minorities, partook in the city's success. English rule over Kochi endured from 1795 until 1947, when India became free. Toward the start of the twentieth hundred years, a cutting edge port with dry harbors and boat fix yards was developed, and Willingdon Island (interfacing Stronghold Cochin with Ernakulam and different municipalities by a rail extension and street) was worked from the dredgings of the harbor's inward channels. After India's freedom, Kochi turned into the significant instructional hub for the Indian Naval force. Kochi, set among beautiful tidal ponds and backwaters, draws in an extensive traveler exchange. At Post Cochin is St. Francis Church, worked by the Portuguese in 1510 and supposedly the principal European church on Indian soil. It was for a period the internment spot of Vasco da Gama before his remaining parts were taken to Portugal. Other chapels as well as Hindu sanctuaries, mosques, and the memorable gathering place at Mattancheri all substitute the region. The Jewish people group in Kochi was the most seasoned in India, professing to date from the fourth century CE. All practically its few thousand individuals had emigrated to Israel by the late twentieth 100 years, notwithstanding. Pop. (2001) city, 595,575; metropolitan agglom., 1,355,972; (2011) city, 602,046; metropolitan agglom., 2,119,724.