This paper examines two interconnected phenomena: the attempt by Ottoman state and non-state actors to cultivate the support of Gujarati Muslim capitalists, and the efforts by those same entrepreneurs to incorporate Ottoman institutions and territories into their trans-imperial economic and political portfolios. Ottoman overtures to Gujarati capitalists were borne out of a recognition that, as some of the most prominent non-European industrialists and commercial magnates, Gujarati Muslim capitalists had much to teach an Ottoman audience, and by a desire by Ottoman actors to seek alternative sources of funding to European finance. As for the Gujarati capitalists, they had long fused hard-won administrative positions in the British, French, and German Empires with their outsized mercantile portfolios. The addition of the Ottoman Empire was thus a natural step in their attempts to strengthen their ‘middle power’ in the commercial and political life of the Indian Ocean before the First World War. Some Gujarati capitalists alternatively became Ottoman consul-generals in the Indian Ocean, opened up branches of their enterprises in the Ottoman lands, and negotiated trade deals with Ottoman functionaires. Although this dalliance between Ottoman figures and Gujarati capital continued through the end of the Khilafat movement, there remained a persistent tension between both sides over sovereign loyalties, the terms of cooperation, and, it need hardly be said, economic self-interest. When refracted through the lens of portfolio capitalism, these developments reveal that at the end of empire there was an attempt by Ottoman actors to make state finance more polycentric in character and to seek out a particular form of ‘Muslim’ capitalism embodied by the Gujarati Muslim commercial castes that could serve as an exemplar for Muslim audiences in the empire. On the flip side, the attempts by Gujarati Muslim capitalists to integrate Ottoman soft power institutions into their own business empires, and to exploit what they saw as the untapped potential of Ottoman markets, reveals a largely overlooked history of vernacular capitalism and political stakeholding in the age of high empire.