ITI founder Devan Shah grew up in comparative privilege in southern India in the city of Coimbatore, acquiring an easy familiarity with many of India’s religious traditions and languages. Summer vacations from school were spent high in the cool Nilgiri mountains near Coonoor on the tea estate managed by his older sister’s husband. In college he took a degree in business, and dutifully but swiftly
climbed the rungs of the tea profession, starting as an assistant to a south India tea broker. The American tea trade in 1989 was sleepy, just barely beginning to wake up to its potential. Though Devan thrived in the electronics import-export business, he knew inside himself this was not right livelihood for a born tea man. In 1990--the same year he married Reena Mahesh of Los Angeles-- he started India Tea Importers. Let the Record Show I have been a witness from the beginning. I got to taste the first six chests of tea Devan imported while they were stacked in his father-in-law’s garage. That was in LA, but we’d met in New York thanks to Madhavan Nambiar, then NY Director of Tea Board of India. Upon learning he was from the Nilgiris, I showed him the Nilgiri tea sample I’d newly received, as it happened, that very hour. Nobody in America, me included, knew anything whatever about south India tea. In ten minutes time, I had learned so much about that tea sample from Devan’s expert professional analysis that on the spot I annointed him my India tea teacher. Devan’s first years in business seemed to me, frankly speaking, scary as a roller-coaster, maybe not truly dangerous but full of dramatic ups and downs. Meanwhile, I was far from the only person Devan was educating about tea. Right from the outset he grasped that those who benefit the most from the tea business are those who contribute the most to tea culture. Devan Shah has played a decisive role in developing America’s tastes in tea. To cite a single example, most ready to drink chai sold in the US were made using Nilgiri teas imported and supplied by Devan. Also: Before he started, there was no ready to drink chai sold in the US. Devan has consistently created markets for tea where there were no markets previously. Reflecting his expanding horizons, India Tea Importers, his original company, in 2000 was re-christened International Tea Importers or ITI. Having become a major importer of organic and fair trade teas as well as conventional teas from every producing country, today Devan is even able to offer China tea rarities like Yellow Tea, first imported into the US in 2006 by ITI. Besides supplying America’s burgeoning tea businesses, no company has exceeded ITI’s contribution to America’s developing tea culture. In 2005 Devan was invited to serve as International Juror at India’s first-ever tea competition, the Golden Leaf India Awards held, as it happened, at the Nilgiri hill station town Conoor, his old summertime home place. In America there is simply nobody who has done more than Devan Shah and his company, ITI, to create the Tea Renaissance blossoming all around us today.
- James norwood Pratt
