Meet Divya, Founder of Para Dewa Collection
The instinct that started it all
Divya has been trying to make things fair since she was six years old. She can't quite explain where it came from — that quiet, stubborn certainty that the odds shouldn't be stacked against people just because they're smaller, quieter, or less well-connected. It became the lens through which she saw everything. Including, eventually, wine.
She came to wine the way a lot of people do: sideways. Not through a grand plan, but through genuine obsession. She started exploring bottles, haunting wine shops, reading labels, asking questions. Educated across two continents — an Ivy League degree in the US, then postgraduate studies in London — she's spent her career in corporate environments where she quickly learned what good really looks like: not what's loudest, but what's most carefully made. One wine qualification led to another, and by 2017 she had her WSET Level 3 — a serious credential that confirmed what she already suspected: this wasn't a hobby. It was a calling.
But the wine world she was stepping into had a problem. Brilliant producers — small ones, independent ones, the ones making extraordinary wine in tiny quantities with total care — were invisible. Not because their wine wasn't good enough. Because they didn't have the budgets, the distribution networks, or the famous names to get shelf space. And in a different corner of the same industry, women were doing quietly remarkable work that the mainstream largely ignored.
Divya found both of those things unacceptable.
The name
Para Dewa is Indonesian — Javanese, to be exact — and it means "of the gods." It's a nod to where Divya's story began, and a name that carries more meaning than it first lets on.
The name she truly wanted was Hadiah Para Dewa: gift from the gods. It was too long to be practical, but the idea behind it never left. Because that's exactly what these wines are. Terroir-driven, shaped by the gifts of soil, climate, and place — things no winemaker can manufacture, only honour. And Divya herself? Her name, Divya, means "gift from the gods" in Sanskrit. The connection felt less like coincidence and more like inevitability.
Para Dewa is the short version. But the gift is always implied.
Why Para Dewa
She spent years turning the idea over: what would it look like to actually fix this? Not to write about it, or campaign about it, but to build something that made it better in a practical, direct way?
In 2023, she did it. Para Dewa was born — a wine business with a clear, deliberate mission: to champion the underdog. That means seeking out small producers who refuse to cut corners. Winemakers working in tiny batches, with minimal additives, putting craft before convenience. And, above all, the women leading and shaping the wine world in places that rarely get the spotlight.
Today, over 65% of Para Dewa's portfolio comes from female-led wineries. Many of them are in Hungary — a country where women have a remarkable, and remarkably underreported, presence in winemaking. Every producer in the range has been chosen because their values align with Para Dewa's. Not just the wine in the bottle, but the story, the ethics, and the person behind it.
Wine without the lecture
There's a second strand to what Divya built, and it matters just as much.
Wine can be intimidating. It has a way of making people feel like they're doing it wrong — wrong glass, wrong temperature, wrong vocabulary. Divya has always found that infuriating. A glass of wine should be fun. It should spark conversations, create connections, make you want to call the person next to you over to smell what's in your glass. Not something you have to pass a test to enjoy.
Para Dewa strips all of that away. No jargon. No snobbery. No expectation that you arrive with a vocabulary or a tasting note. Just honest conversation about what you like, and a genuine commitment to helping you find more of it. Because the wine Divya works with — made by people who care deeply about what's in the bottle — deserves to be drunk and enjoyed, not studied and scored.
When you buy from Para Dewa, you're paying for what's in the bottle. Not a brand name. Not a corporate owner maximising margins. Just beautiful wine, made by someone who loves what they do.