Late Uni Walkers’ founder started business life as a shrimp exporter
Badra Wimalasekera, the well-known businessman who passed away last week, was one of the Sri Lanka’s first exporters who later branched into retail marketing.
Badra Wimalasekera
According to close associates of the founder of the Uni Walkers Group, Mr. Wimalasekera started off as an exporter of shrimps in the 1960s.
He was a close friend of former and late Minister Gamini Dissanayake but despite this friendship, was unable to get any Mahaweli contracts. “Gamini didn’t interfere in the tender process,” one associate said.
He started Uni Walkers Ltd just before 1977 (when the free-market economy was embraced) and then secured the Dahaitu car and trucks’ agency. Mr. Wimalasekera was one of the first occupants of the Duty Free Shop (DFS – outside the Katunayake airport) at Kollupitiya, the brainchild of the late Lalith Athulathmudali.
The Kollupitiya DFS facility didn’t work however and was subsequently closed. “I remember him saying ‘before I go home every day from the DFS, I carefully count the money earned during the day’,” noted a friend, saying the late businessman was meticulous to a point.
Uni Walkers Ltd main business was being the agent of Panasonic electronic goods – refrigerators, cookers, etc. The group also had the agency for Japan’s C. Itoh and Co, were into packaging as well as being one of the first Internet service providers with ‘Eureka.lk’.
The good fortunes were reversed some years later owing to a couple of bad investments and sour deals which saw Mr. Wimalasekera being charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2001 for allegedly siphoning out money from Horana Plantations (HPL) to Uni Walkers Ltd.
A SEC media release at the time said that the regulator at the request of Mr. Wimalasekara, a Director of HPL, was allowed to compound the case and asked to pay a sum of Rs. 3 million which was credited to the Compensation Fund of the SEC.
In 2006 as the financial woes of the group continued, Softlogic Holdings bought over the company. The packaging segment of the group was taken over by Edna (chocolate) group.