Conservation and care

Savera Weerasinghe’s career, from a non-profit to the manufacturing industry to sustainability, has always had a single common theme: start small, think big.

IMAN SALEEM

There’s something comforting about the fact that Savera Weerasinghe, despite having founded a thriving non-profit, worked as the CEO of a paper packaging company, and launched a brand of sustainable packaging, isn’t 100 per cent sure about how the Inland Revenue Department works. It was one of many challenges she faced when she decided to run Ananta Sustainables—previously a part of MSH Packaging Industries, where she worked as CEO—as its own independent company in 2018. “I think the hardest thing was, before, I had a whole management team—shipping department, legal, finance—so there were a lot of really basic things that I didn’t know how to do,” she tells me. “And now I’m like, oh my gosh, I have to figure this out. It was a huge leap. But it’s been amazing in terms of the kind of people you meet — sustainability is like a natural filter for good people who get it.”