East India Company:

This Act clearly demarcated borders between the Crown and the Company. After this point, the Company functioned as a regularised subsidiary of the Crown, with greater accountability for its actions and reached a stable stage of expansion and consolidation. Having temporarily achieved a state of truce with the Crown, the Company continued to expand its influence to nearby territories through threats and coercive actions. By the middle of the 19th century, the Company's rule extended across most of India, Burma, Malaya, Singapore, and British Hong Kong, and a fifth of the world's population was under its trading influence. In addition, Penang, one of the states in Malaya, became the fourth most important settlement, a presidency, of the Company's Indian territories.

Please answer a question about this article. If the question is unanswerable, say "unanswerable". What did the EIC become less of to the crown?
unanswerable