The ‘window’ that he used to peep through to ‘admire girls’ moving across the paddy field and through which he sneaked out to watch movies at cinemas during his school days is the same concept adopted by Dr Ravi Liyanage, Chairman/CEO, Kingdom of Raigam, to look through and vision the people’s attitudes to consumer products and to strategize these visions to market orientation.
Dr Ravi Liyanage |
Dr Liyanage was reminiscing his past also his success in business when he addressed the monthly Sunday Times Business Club meeting held at Cinnamon Grand Hotel last week.
Dr Liyanage said the strategic window provides the opportunities to invest in a product and capitalise on markets. He said that the success of business is not only theories, but also essentially common sense.
He said a small partnership 12 years ago with only eight employees was how the Kingdom of Raigam was created and now it has grown to a 1,400 strong workforce. The Rs 2 million investment has turned into a gigantic Rs 3 billion and the company is also the market leader in their primary product ‘Soya’ capturing around 48 % of the market.
Responding to a query from the audience, Dr Liyanage conceded that he obtained government assistance in obtaining vast areas of land for such industries like salt production which now has become a thriving business for him.
He said that when he decided to enter the Soya products market 12 years ago there were other companies doing good business on that product. He found that it was sold as a pure vegetarian product, but a survey they carried out have found that in the entire country there were only 5 % pure vegetarians, and the other 95% were non-vegetarian. He thus positioned his soya products as non-vegetarian adding some natural flavours.
Dr Liyanage said that the ‘windows’ concept is used to look outside to see how markets work and identify the opportunities. He said using the same strategy, he looked at the salt market in Sri Lanka. He said that in European countries using table salt is very popular and even India the use of table salt is popular.
In Sri Lanka table salt was imported and the proportion of usage was just 5% table salt and 95% crystal salt before Raigam entered the market. He ventured into this market, took over the salterns that were earlier managed by the government. He said that to produce salt no energy is needed and the raw material is freely available – sea or lagoon water. He is now turning the market pattern of converting crystal salt users into table salt users and is forging ahead by reversing the trends where the proportion would be (in the future) 75% table salt and 25% crystal salt.
He said that using the same tactics, the company has entered the women’s sanitary towel market. Dr Liyanage said his success has been recognized and felicitated and he has won several prestigious accolades. The club is hosted by the Cinnamon Grand, Colombo and co-sponsored by Hameedia. |
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