Water, but with a splash of flavour
Doctors and health professionals have been warning the public about the importance of staying hydrated in the warmer months. This is easy to do when at home, and maybe the office, where access to water is a given. However, on the go, water needs to be purchase water. 
“Water is water, we shouldn’t be charging premiums for water, because it is easily accessible to everyone. We are providing purified water where there is the threat of water-borne diseases,” says Rovini Illukkumbura, entrepreneur and the force behind Islander bottled water.
Rovini is an ex-Vishakian who excelled in synchronised swimming, was in the national team and went on to coach. She worked at giants such as Unilever, Samsung, MAS, and is now at Heinz.
“You come to a point where you realise you are building everyone else’s brand, when you could be building your own. And I’ve always wanted to head my own company,” Rovini confesses about her venture.
The Islander brand is not just about plain water. It’s flavour based water. “This is new. I have water, and then I have water in four flavours – lemon and lime, watermelon, mint and peach.”
Rovini works in partnership with Bevco Lanka locally. “It took us over a year to develop this product. There is a shelf life study that takes a long time. We took time to test it and pilot it in order to arrive at a winning product,” Rovini says with pride. “This actually went through two improvements; Initially when I launched through a pilot, people said the sweetness should be increased. Which we have to heed, people’s palates are different. Especially kids and young people. But in supermarkets now there are people looking for zero or low sugar in beverages so this is why we had to make two improvements to the product we have today. The current sweetness level in our water is very subtle.”
Rovini started out by doing a survey of 10 flavours with people voting in. She then tested the waters by retailing it to test visitor reception.
“This is an alternative to people who don’t like plain old water. Even though this causes so many problems,” she adds. “This is also an alternative to those who crave a soft drink with meals.
Rovini
“I have friends who have diabetes and still consume soft drinks, and mix them with alcohol,” she says, exasperated. “Currently the Diabetic Association of Sri Lanka is testing my product,” she says.Islander water has the traffic light indication off sugar displayed on the bottle. “This has zero sugars. It has a very subtle flavour.”
Rovini admits that she is concerned about plastic pollution. “I want to go into a glass bottle, to stop plastic. But there’s a lot of problems with transporting glass though.”
Right now she is tackling the plastic problem by collecting the empty Islander bottles from the places she sells them. “The new glass bottle will be imported because here they don’t produce easy-to-use glass drinking bottles with a screw cap. So they can’t be reused.”
Rovini is looking at expanding the Islander range, “I’m studying where international trends are moving. I’m looking at preferences and products in the Middle East market. Bottled water is big there. My passion is to build my brand, Islander, along the lines of an adventure brand.” The Islander flavoured water bottles were first retailed in March through SPAR Sri Lanka, Thalawathugoda. “It’s been flying off the shelves,” Rovini enthuses. She is in Sri Lanka at the moment to launch in supermarkets and other retailers .
For more information log on to Rovini’s Islander pages www.facebook.com/islander.sl/ www.instagram.com/islander.sl/
Water with a twist. Pix by Sameera Weerasekera