Delhi tea company established in 1981 under master tea taster Sanjay Kapur, blending Darjeeling first, second and autumn flush teas alongside masala chai and green, white and oolong teas. Rainforest Alliance certified, with 15 retail stores in India and exports to more than 26 countries.
Devan's has sourced and roasted coffee from Delhi's Khanna Market since 1962, now run by a third generation. The catalog spans single-origin beans and custom blends to cold brew bags, chicory, and Nespresso-compatible capsules.
Best for Catalog spans single-origin beans and custom blends to cold brew bags, chicory
Devan's has been sourcing and roasting coffee from the same Khanna Market address in Delhi's Lodhi Colony since 1962, which makes the current operation a three-generation family business rather than a single founder's shop still running on its original owner. The company's own description is specific about the work involved — sourcing and expertly roasting the best single origin coffees and skilfully crafting blends — for what it counts as nearly six decades, a claim that lines up with the 1962 founding date rather than rounding up. The catalog reflects a business that has kept adding formats rather than sticking to one: single-origin beans, custom blends, cold brew and hot brew bags, chicory blends aimed at a more traditional filter-coffee drinker, imported coffee, and Nespresso-compatible capsules for customers who've moved to pod machines, plus a complementary tea line. Customer testimonials cited on the company's own site reference relationships going back fifty years and beyond — a detail that, paired with the three-generation framing, suggests a business built more on repeat, long-term customers than one-time tourist traffic. For a shopper today, Devan's reads as a rare case of a mid-century Delhi roaster that adapted its product line, capsule compatibility included, without relocating from its original market address.
Founded in 1790 by Lala Sukh Lal Jain, this Chandni Chowk sweet shop served Mughal royalty and colonial-era Delhi for over two centuries before closing in 2015; eighth-generation descendant Aryan Jain has since reopened it nearby at Maliwara Tiraha Bazar.
Best for Sohan halwa and Old Delhi mithai
Ghantewala was founded in 1790 by Lala Sukh Lal Jain, a sweet-maker who migrated to Delhi from Rajasthan and first sold mishri mawa, a Rajasthani specialty, before building a reputation across the Mughal court. According to the shop's own oft-repeated history, its name comes from a bell-ringer (ghantawala) at the Red Fort who became a devoted regular customer. The 1857 edition of the newspaper Dihli Urdu Akhbar recorded rebel soldiers from other regions being won over by Delhi's comforts, singling out Ghantewala's sweets by name — one of the earliest documented press references to an Indian sweet shop. Ghantewala continued operating through Mughal rule, British colonial administration and into independent India, drawing visitors including national political figures, before closing in 2015 after 225 years, a closure widely attributed to disputes among family shareholders and the pressures of modern food-safety regulation on a legacy business. Aryan Jain, described as the family's eighth-generation custodian, and Sushant Jain revived the brand, reopening a shop nearby in Chandni Chowk at Maliwara Tiraha Bazar, Katra Shah N Shah, combining the original recipes with updated operations.
Snack and sweets chain founded in 1937 in Bikaner, Rajasthan, by Ganga Bhishen Agarwal, who began selling bhujia and traditional sweets from a small shop before the family opened a Nagpur manufacturing plant in 1970.
Best for Sweets & snacks.
Haldiram's traces back to 1937, when Ganga Bhishen Agarwal — known as Haldiram Ji — opened his own small shop in Bikaner, Rajasthan, after learning the trade in his father's bhujia business. Bhujia is a crunchy, deep-fried chickpea-flour snack seasoned with spices, and it became the foundation of what Agarwal built: a shop selling bhujia alongside other traditional Indian sweets and namkeen. As demand grew beyond Bikaner, the family expanded operations to Kolkata and, in 1970, opened a manufacturing plant in Nagpur, Maharashtra, a move aimed at reaching markets across western and southern India. Nagpur later became the company's operational base. The broader Agarwal family runs several related but separately structured businesses under different names — including Haldiram's, Bikanervala, Bhikharam Chandamal and Bikaji — a pattern common among Rajasthani trading families that split operations among siblings and branches over generations. Today Haldiram's product range spans namkeen, packaged sweets, chaat and ready meals, sold through its own outlets and wide retail distribution across India and abroad.