Every founder's story starts with a problem they couldn't ignore. Mine was hiding in plain sight, on every supermarket shelf in Sri Lanka.
Pick up almost any drink or snack in our stores and read the label. Sugar — usually lots of it. Preservatives. Artificial flavours and colours. Emulsifiers with names you can't pronounce. We have normalised feeding ourselves and our children ingredients we would never willingly add to a home-cooked meal. And the consequences are all around us: Sri Lanka has some of the highest rates of diabetes in the world, and so many of us are quietly struggling with weight, cholesterol, and gut issues we've come to accept as normal.
I didn't accept it. I started Keto Queen because I believed Sri Lankans deserve food that is genuinely good for them — and good enough that choosing it never feels like a sacrifice.
The harder road
The easy way to build a food brand is to buy ready-made formulations, slap on a label, and market it hard. We took the harder road: we built our own product development lab, and we make everything ourselves.
That decision cost us time. Our new nut milk range alone took countless attempts and failed batches before we cracked it. Getting a creamy, delicious almond milk with no chemical stabilisers, no preservatives, and a full year of shelf life — manufactured entirely in Sri Lanka, which nobody had done before — was genuinely hard. But that's precisely why it matters. Anyone can make food taste good with sugar and chemistry. Making it taste good with nothing but real, natural ingredients is a craft.
Today, that craft has produced Sri Lanka's first locally-manufactured nut milks: pure Almond Milk, a Chocolate Almond Milk our kids can't get enough of, an Almond Iced Coffee (my personal weakness), and a Cinnamon Dolce Latte made with cashew milk and true Ceylon Cinnamon. No additives. No preservatives. Fortified with prebiotic fibre for gut health, and sweetened with low-GI organic coconut sugar — because I refuse to believe we must choose between our sweet tooth and our health.
More than what's in the bottle
Somewhere along this journey, I realised that "healthy" can't stop at the ingredient list. A truly healthy society is one where prosperity reaches the people who grow and make our food.
So our coffee and cocoa come from small, sustainable local farms under fair trade practices. And our bottling plant, on the outskirts of Colombo, is owned and operated by a remarkable young woman — with an all-female workforce. I am as proud of that as I am of anything in the bottle. Every purchase you make supports rural farming communities and women-led enterprise in this country.
Where we go from here
This blog is where I'll share the journey honestly — the science behind our ingredients, what's cooking in our lab (vegan chocolates, protein bars, and natural fruit drinks are already in the works), the wins, and yes, the failed batches too.
My vision is simple to state and enormous to achieve: a Sri Lanka where the healthy choice is the easy choice — affordable, delicious, and proudly made here at home. That's not something one brand builds alone. It takes farmers, makers, retailers, parents, and every person who reads a label and decides they deserve better.
If that's you — welcome. Let's walk the talk for a healthier lifestyle, together.
— Afthab
Founder, Keto Queen