Ispahani Tea

The Ispahani family's South Asian trading business dates to 1820, but the tea house as it operates today traces to 1934, when Mirza Ahmed Ispahani and his brothers, Mirza Abol Hassan and Mirza Mahmood, formalized their Calcutta trading operation — first opened by their father Mirza Mohammed Ispahani in 1900 — into M.M. Ispahani Limited. The company moved its head office to Chittagong in 1947, where it remains, and has spent the decades since building what is now Bangladesh's largest tea trading business.

That scale rests on four company-owned tea estates — Ghazipore, Mirzapore, Zareen, and Neptune — feeding brands including Mirzapore Best Leaf, Mirzapore Double Chamber Tea Bags, Blender's Choice Premium Tea, and Zareen Premium Tea, sold through a network of 517 sales centers across 25 divisional offices nationwide. By its own account Ispahani holds roughly half of Bangladesh's branded tea market and around 80 percent of the branded tea-bag segment, a dominance that has made it the country's top hot-beverage brand for nine consecutive years running as of 2023.

For a business that started as a general South Asian trading house before tea became its defining product, Ispahani's four estates and century-plus of continuous operation make it the closest thing Bangladesh has to a national tea institution.