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For YPO member <keyword id="3179310" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Subra-Eassuwaren">Subra Eassuwaren</keyword>, business is a force of good, looking after its employees, the surrounding community and the environment. The CEO of Eswaren Brothers, a third-generation Sri Lankan tea production and export business, shares his story with Family Capital. 
 
Spirituality is not something that readily comes to mind when thinking about the core principles of a family business. But, for the Sri Lankan family business Eswaran Brothers, ideas beyond materialism, say family members, are an important driving force for its global businesses. 
 
“The business goes beyond just making money,” says Subra Eassuwaren, the third generation family member helping to run the company, which has at its heart the production and export of tea. “Our seven principles are central to everything we do. I don’t know any other business that has these sort of principles behind them.” 
 
In the mid-2000s, the Colombo-based company looked back at its history and attempted to define its core values. It came up with seven principles - determination, hard work, honesty, courage, love, patience, and spirituality. Subra reckons that these principles weren’t just about some remote mission statement, but they were essential in helping the business to grow and become one of the biggest tea exporters in the world. Today, employing 2,500 people, Eswaran exports to more than 50 countries. It is one of Sri Lanka’s best known companies and its various tea brands are increasingly known to consumers in Japan, Russia, the US and much of Africa. 
 
But, as Subra says, it’s not all about the money. “We see the business as something that is a force for good - that looks after the people working in it, that looks after the community living around it, and that looks after the environment it functions in.” 
 
The importance of stakeholder values at Eswaran goes back to its founder VTV Deivanayagam Pillai who, from nothing, founded the business in 1943. Orphaned at the age of 12, Deivanayagam Pillai came to to Sri Lanka from southern India and worked as a shop boy until World War Two presented him with an opportunity to own a shop. “When the Japanese started bombing Colombo many shop owners sold up and left, but for my grandfather this represented a huge opportunity to acquire his own business” says Subra. Deivanayagam Pillai was able to buy a grocery shop at a knockdown price, and from there was able to expand and buy other similar shops. 
 
From the very beginning, says Subra, Deivanayagam Pillai placed a lot of emphasis on looking after his workers, which has been a guiding principle of Eswaran ever since. Subra’s grandfather had nine children, the eldest of which was D. Eassuwaren, who went on to incorporate the business under the name Eswaran Brothers in 1963. “My grandfather’s business was essentially grocery and commodities trading. What my father did was diversified the company into exports,” says Subra. Although tea remains the core to the family business, Eswaran Brothers is part of a bigger conglomerate called VTV group of companies, which is involved in a host of sectors, including plastics, paper recycling and textiles. 
 
The second and the third generation have made a number of changes over the years to ensure the businesses all remain competitive. These include focusing on adding value to the existing products by doing their own packaging and creating Eswaran’s own products. 
 
“By focusing as much on adding value and making our own products have kept us a little bit safer from commodity fluctuations,” says Subra. “Tea is very much of a weather and market-driven commodity, and during the last 10 years there has huge fluctuations in its price. By being a branded product and much closer to the consumer we've been able to ride out some of these fluctuations much better." 
 
Changes were also made to its ownership and governance of the business. According to Subra, up until mid-2000 there were a lot of cross family shareholdings, and some family members were bought out of their holdings in the business. Governance structures were implemented, which, according to Subra, wouldn’t look out of place in a listed business. “The tea business is run as if we were listed on the stock exchange. There are three non-executive directors, my father is chairman and there are very clear reporting lines. There is also an audit and remuneration committee.” 
 
Subra’s journey into the family business seemed to be predetermined at an early age, but not necessarily through pressure from the family. “All of us grow up with the family business. It was family life in many ways.” Studying law at Oxford University in the UK, Subra said that by the end of the first year he was sure he didn’t want to study law. “But I did know I wanted to join the family business.” 
 
After graduating from Oxford, Subra went on to work for local banks for two years before joining the family business. “The banking experience was very useful to understand how international trade works.” Joining in 2002, he worked in the textile side and then joined the tea business, where he continues to work today as vice chairman with his father as chairman. 
 
Subra says his Oxford contacts together with membership of the Young Presidents Organisation, a membership group of leaders all under the age of 40, have helped him tremendously in his running of the business. “Through YPO I can network with peers around the world and tap into people with similar lines of thought.” 
 
Still relatively young at 39, Subra is sanguine about the prospects of the family business. “I’m sure that the philosophy that has been at the heart of the business since 1943 will continue to drive our success in the years ahead.” 
 
Markets for Eswaran’s products will fluctuate, but one thing that is likely to be certain is that the company won’t need any spiritual inspiration to achieve its goals in the years ahead. 
 
(The interview was taken by David Bain of Family Capital reproduced by YPO)

Subra Eassuwaren and why spirituality has helped the family business

For YPO member Subra Eassuwaren, CEO of tea and spice export company Eswaran Brothers Exports (Pvt) Ltd, humble beginnings are not just myth; they are part of his legacy. 
 
The company was founded in 1943 by Eassuwaren’s grandfather, VTV Deivanayagam Pillai. Born in 1919 in South India, VTV was orphaned at the age of 12, moved to (then) colonial Ceylon, began working as a shop boy and through hard work and a dedication to spirituality, became the leader of one of the most respected trading houses in Sri Lanka. This family lineage of dedication to work and higher self is at the center of what makes the company successful today. 
 
“In 2007 when we were trying to map out the core values and principles of our company, we talked about how my grandfather practiced corporate social responsibility. At the time, it wasn’t going into annual reports – looking after people around you was just what you did,” says Eassuwaren, who joined the YPO Colombo Chapter in the South Asia Region in 2013. 
 
“We decided to make this one of our key selling points and build on the idea of responsibility which led to us to becoming the most sustainable tea company in the world.” 
 
Most tea plantations are monocultures, the cultivation or growth of a single crop or organism. Monocultures can take a toll on the earth, upsetting the local ecological balance by eradicating the natural plants and animals, which feed each other the chemicals and minerals required to thrive. Eliminating this natural cycle from an ecosystem requires artificial fertilizers, used to boost crop yields at a great expense to local biodiversity. 
 
In direct opposition to this are Eswaran’s plantations, with their commitment to protecting the environment for generations to come through a dedication to ecological design, engineering and integrated water resources management. 
 
In order to achieve this, the company set themselves targets to ensure they were improving their indicator species; the more types of plants flourishing, the better likelihood of attracting a variety of butterflies. If frogs are alive and well in the soil, it means the water is relatively clean, and the more dragonflies in the ecosystem, the better it is doing. 
 
 
 
Eswaran’s recent efforts to “water footprint” their tea products led them to focus sustainability endeavors not just on operational water usage, but water usage throughout the supply chain. Eswaran Brothers studied their grey water – the volume of water required to dilute pollution, green water – the amount of water incorporated into the product, and blue water – surface water or water taken from ground in order to mitigate environmental impact. 
 Eswaran Brothers achieved a major milestone in December 2010, when they became one of the first tea companies globally, and the first company in Sri Lanka, to achieve CarbonNeutral certification for their product, <keyword id="3168322" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="tea-so-tea">Tea so Tea</keyword>. A Fair Trade, <keyword id="3168323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="carbon-positive-tea">carbon positive tea</keyword>, made as sustainable as possible by using only biodegradable materials and inks, offsets your personal footprint with every pack you buy. 
 
“We call it ‘cradle to grave,’” says Eassuwaren. “The tea leaf is plucked, we make it, package it, ship it and place it on a shelf where somebody buys it, makes the tea then throws it away where it decomposes and creates carbon dioxide.” 
 
Eswaran Brothers have partnered with the Conservation Carbon Company and Rainforests Rescue International to institute the Hiniduma Conservation Carbon Programme, which will grow endemic forest trees to protect against fragmentation, eventually reversing the process of centuries of deforestation. 
 
“We studied a handful of farmers’ lands and then gave them trees to plant, both cash crops and forest trees. In order to qualify for the program the farmers had to come to training with us where they learned the benefits of organic farming, and the importance of biodiversity.” 
 
Eswaran Brothers’ dedication to impact the environment has led to the creation of a product that, itself, speaks the language of positivity. 
 
“Tea is a plant that only benefits the people and the environment around it,” says Eassuwaren. 
 
 
 
The seven principles Eswaran Brothers base their business on, read simply enough: 
 
Determination 
Hard Work 
Honesty 
Courage 
Love 
Patience 
Spirituality 
 
One would be hard-pressed to find many businesses that not only adhere to these doctrines, but create a product that steeps their customers in them as well. 
 
Winner of the Junior Chamber International 10 outstanding young Sri Lankans of 2011 award for the environment, the Eswaran Brothers were the recipients of the 2012 Responsible Business category of the Social Pioneer awards organized by the United Nations, Global Compact and were highly commended in the prestigious United Kingdom Energy and Environment Awards. 
 
“There’s a long way to go and we are bumping and learning along the path,” says Eassuwaren. “But the idea is to create something that only does good.” 
 
(The author of this article is Deborah Stoll from Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). This article first appeared in Impact Insights, the newsletter of YPO’s Social Engagement Network that connects more than 4,500 like-minded members around philanthropic issues.)

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