The Number One Focus Is On Our People

Director Aroon Hirdaramani carries on his great grandfather's legacy by helping run a company that respects its employees, environment and customers.

- Oliver Featherston

Hirdaramani Group has a long and proud history in apparel, though it emerged from humble beginnings. In 1900, 16-year-old Parmanand Hirdaramani opened a retail store in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, providing same-day tailoring to cruise ship passengers on a stopover. Forty-six years later, the Hirdaramani Group was born, opening stores in other cities across Sri Lanka and beginning industrial-scale apparel manufacturing shortly thereafter. 

Today, Parmanand’s legacy carries on, with many of the Hirdaramani family still overseeing the company for which he laid the groundwork. Aroon Hirdaramani, great-grandson of Parmanand, and Director of the Hirdaramani Group, recognises the importance of that tradition to this day.

“We’ve been a pioneer in the apparel industry since the company was started by my great grandfather,” he says. “But I think what’s most important to us, our employees and customers, is that we are a well-run company that values integrity.”

That pioneering spirit has seen the Group attain a global presence, far beyond the little store in Colombo. Hirdaramani’s interests extend across the Indian sub-continent and South-East Asia, and as far afield as China, Ethiopia and the US. Nor has the company let itself be confined to apparel, though that is indisputably its primary focus; Hirdaramani has invested in numerous hotel chains, renewable energy sources, retail and IT/financial services.