More than eight decades ago, a Sri Lankan merchant opened a grocery shop and wrote down seven principles he believed should govern everything his business did. They included what most founders would expect — integrity, excellence, long-term relationships — and some they would not: love in action, spiritual responsibility. At the time, they were a statement of intent. What followed turned them into something rarer: an operating record.
Eswaran Brothers, recognised at the Great Manager Awards 2025, is today one of Asia’s largest teabag manufacturers, exporting to more than 52 countries, holding patents registered in the United States, and operating as the world’s first CarbonNeutral tea company. Echelon spoke with Eassuwaren Deivanayagam, Chairman, Eassuwaren Subramaniam, Vice Chairman, and Nimali Adikari Senevirathne, Group Head of Human Resources & Legal, about how those results came to be.
They share how its founding principles were tested — against the pressures of global competition, the demands of modern workplace culture, and the expectations of a market that increasingly wants to know not just what is in the box, but who made it and how. Across its founding vision, its diversification strategy, its culture and people policies, its international expansion, its approach to innovation, and its long-term sustainability commitments, Eswaran Brothers has made the same bet, repeatedly: that values and performance are the foundation of success.
The Founding Principles and Legacy Vision Behind the Enterprise
Few Sri Lankan companies can trace their origins to a corner grocery shop and a set of guiding principles written before independence. Eswaran Brothers was founded in the early 1940s by VTV Deivanayagam Pillai, a merchant whose ambitions for the business were inseparable from his convictions about how it should be run. Seven core principles — integrity, love in action, spiritual responsibility, excellence, long-term relationships, social and environmental responsibility, and purposeful innovation — were not drafted as a mission statement. They were the operating logic of the enterprise from the beginning. His successor, D. Eassuwaren, took those principles into global markets, steering the company away from commodity trading and towards value-added tea production. “Where most Sri Lankan tea businesses remained dependent on bulk exports, we built capability across the entire value chain: manufacturing, design, packaging, and distribution,” says Deivanayagam. Today, the company stands as one of Asia’s largest teabag manufacturers, exporting to more than 52 countries.
Diversifying From Selling Tea to Owning the Format
Those principles did not remain philosophy for long. When D. Eassuwaren took the family business into global markets, he faced a choice that defines most commodity exporters: grow by selling more, or grow by owning more of the process. Eswaran Brothers chose the latter.
The company began moving away from bulk tea trading and into value-added manufacturing, building capability across the entire production chain. Each step inward — into processing, then packaging, then design — reduced dependence on what others would pay for raw material and increased control over what the final product could command. The establishment of T-Print (Pvt) Ltd formalised that logic. With in-house design, printing, and packaging, Eswaran Brothers no longer needed to hand off the final impression of its product to someone else.
That accumulated capability eventually pointed towards a new frontier: premium gifting. The company began developing curated, design-led tea experiences — products where aesthetics and storytelling carry as much weight as what is inside the box. It is a market where margins are determined by perception, not just production cost, and one that rewards exactly the kind of integrated capability Eswaran Brothers had spent decades building.
The clearest signal of how far the company had travelled came with its patents. Eswaran Brothers holds intellectual property on its own teabag technology, with protection registered across multiple countries including the United States. For a Sri Lankan manufacturer, owning a format rather than fulfilling one is not a small distinction.
Applying the Principles to Create an Inclusive Work Culture
Building a globally integrated business is one test of a company’s principles. Building an equitable workplace is another. Eswaran Brothers was built on principles its founder considered inseparable from business itself — among them, love in action and responsibility to society. For decades those principles shaped how the company treated its communities, its supply chain, and its customers. Eventually, they turned inward.
In October 2024, the company partnered with Value for Women (VFW), backed by FMO, the Dutch development bank, to examine its own workforce. What the diagnostic revealed was a familiar pattern: women comprised 44% of employees but were 2.5 times less likely than men to hold leadership positions. The principles the company had long proclaimed had not yet fully reached the people inside it. The response was a structured Gender Action Plan covering leadership development, parental support, mental wellbeing, financial literacy, and industry advocacy. Eswaran Brothers introduced five days of paternity leave and reintegration support for returning mothers. Managers were trained as inclusion advocates. “What makes this partnership especially noteworthy is that as a family company steeped in values, we were able to work with VFW and FMO to create a far-reaching programme of real importance,” says Senevirathne. “This reflects strategic foresight and a fundamental belief in doing the right thing.” The change reached individuals too. A production supervisor, newly enrolled in leadership training, said she could now see possibilities she had never imagined — a shift from worker to prospective leader that the VTV Foundation, which has supported over 20,000 children’s education, and the industry’s Mother and Child-Friendly Seal, were always pointing towards.
L-R: Eassuwaren Deivanayagam, Chairman; Eassuwaren Subramaniam, Vice Chairman
An International Presence Built on Trust
The same discipline that built the product — controlling every step, refusing short-cuts — shaped how Eswaran Brothers entered the world. Long-term relation- ships over short-term gains is one of the seven principles. It is also a precise description of how the company built its international business.
The company’s “packed at source”philosophy sits at the centre of that approach. Rather than shipping bulk tea for packaging elsewhere — the path most commodity exporters followed — Eswaran Brothers insisted on controlling the product through to its final form in Sri Lanka. That decision preserved quality and flavour, but it also made a statement about origin. In a global market increasingly interested in provenance and traceability, a product that arrives already finished carries a different kind of credibility than one assembled at the destination.
Today the company exports to 52+ countries, supported by a global network spanning sourcing, manufacturing, and sales. “We have always prioritised building enduring partnerships with global brands over chasing transactional volume,” says Subramaniam. “It is a slower path, but customers who buy from us once tend to keep buying.” The patented teabag technology, the fully integrated production capability, the plantation-to-cup traceability — each gave international partners a reason to stay. What began as a Sri Lankan exporter has gradually become something closer to a global manufacturing partner, with Sri Lankan origin as a feature rather than simply a point of departure.
Innovation That Moves Before the Market Does
A company present in 52 countries cannot hold that position on relationships alone. The tea industry demands more sophistication than it is often given credit for — consumer preferences are fragmenting, sustainability requirements are tightening, and the line between a commodity product and a premium experience is increasingly determined by technology and design. Eswaran Brothers has built a track record of getting there first.
The company became the world’s first CarbonNeutral tea company, and among the first globally to introduce both carbon-neutral and plastic-neutral tea products. In Sri Lanka, it launched the country’s first organisational water footprint initiative. “These were not responses to regulation — they preceded it,” says Deivanayagam. “That is a different kind of decision.” On the manufacturing side, advanced production systems brought consistency across every major teabag format, while full plantation-to-cup traceability gave international buyers transparency that few competitors could offer.
That investment eventually produced intellectual property: Eswaran Brothers holds patents on its own teabag technology, with protection registered across multiple countries including the United States. The company is also positioning for where the market is heading. Functional and wellness teas represent one of the faster-growing segments in global beverages, and the premium gifting category rewards design and storytelling as much as product quality — a direction that suits a company that has spent decades building integrated capability across production, packaging, and presentation.
A Vision Measured in Sustainability and Responsibility
The next chapter for Eswaran Brothers is already being written, in the markets it is entering, the intellectual property it is building, and the workplace it is still reshaping. Eswaran Brothers signed on to the UN Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative, not as a reputational exercise but as a strategic commitment. It sits alongside a record that includes biodiversity conservation programmes, community upliftment, and sustainability credentials the company earned before most of its competitors recognised them as relevant. The direction from here is consistent with how the company has always grown — by deepening what it already does well rather than chasing adjacencies. The premium and gifting segments are being expanded. Proprietary innovation and IP ownership are being extended. The gender empowerment programme, still in progress, is expected to yield a public case study that Eswaran Brothers hopes will set a standard for the broader tea export sector.
“The principles written by our founder — responsibility to society, love in action, purposeful innovation — are still the ones being tested against real decisions today,” says Subramaniam. “That continuity is not accidental. It is the work.”
The VTV Foundation continues to invest in education. Ethical sourcing frameworks govern the supply chain. And the question the company now carries into its next chapter is whether the same framework that built one of Sri Lanka’s most enduring enterprises can carry it further ahead.