Shea Wickramasingha tells APIIT MBA’s ‘Life is a journey…….start focused’
Sheamalee Wickramasingha The Managing Director CBL Group
The strongest Industry linked MBA in Sri Lanka – The Staffordshire University that has a 21 year partnership with the Asia Pacific Institute of Technology( APIIT) hosted the top corporate personality Sheamalee Wickramasingha the Managing Director- CBL Group at last week’s APIIT MBA Diaries in the backdrop of the launch of the new syllabi of the Staffordshire University MBA.
The key message from the top business personality to the youngsters was ‘ Life is a journey – start focussed. The best case in point was we wanted to enter retail and at first when we launched into this business we did not get it right and we lost a lot of money and then the board advised that we move out…but I always wanted to do this and we got another opportunity and we analysed and sketched the game plan and today we have SPAR explained Ms Wickramasingha.
Shea Wickramasingha is the Group Managing Director of CBL Group. CBL Group has manufacturing operations in confectionery, cereals, Soya, coconuts, and fruits and has strong market leadership in Sri Lanka in several categories with its Brands such as Munchee, Ritzbury, Revello, Lanka Soy, Samaposha and Sera.. The Group has two manufacturing plants in Bangladesh and Ghana and export their range of products to over 55 countries. CBL Group is also the Sri Lankan Partner for SPAR International and operate supermarkets in Sri Lanka under license.
Shea joined Ceylon Biscuits Limited in 1991 as a Food Technologist and worked in various capacities in the Company and Group. She was invited to join the Board in 1996. She sits on all of the Subsidiary Boards of the Group.
She is also the founder and Managing Director of Modern Pack Lanka (Pvt) Ltd. and a Director of JF&I Packaging (Pvt) Limited.
Presently she is a member of EDB Advisory Committee on Processed Food and Beverages, Council of the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon, the Board of AmCham Sri Lanka, the Board of United States- Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission and an alternate member of the Sun Movement Executive Committee.
She has been a member of the main committee of Ceylon Chamber of Commerce since 2013 and was a Board member of the institution’s first Board from June 2015 to May 2017.
She has a MSc degree in Food Chemistry from Purdue University USA and a BSc in Food Science & Industry from Kansas State University, USA. She has an interest in Functional and Healing properties of Food and has studied extensively on the subject. She is also an Old girl of Benenden School in the UK and Ladies College in Sri Lanka.
APIIT said in the communique that the new upgraded syllabi from Staffordshire University is all about Entrepreneurship and Marketing Innovation and the case study of SPAR is a classic real life example on the new skill set required for today’s business executive. This is essentially what the new MBA from Staffordshire University(UK) is offering to Sri Lanka said APIIT.
Esntrepreneur is someone who organises, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise explained Ms Wickramasingha. An entrepreneur is an agent of change. Entrepreneurship is the process of discovering new ways of combining resources. When the market value generated by this new combination of resources is greater than the market value these resources can generate elsewhere individually or in some other combination, the entrepreneur makes a profit. An entrepreneur who takes the resources necessary to produce a pair of jeans that can be sold for thirty dollars and instead turns them into a denim backpack that sells for fifty dollars will earn a profit by increasing the value those resources create. This comparison is possible because in competitive resource markets, an entrepreneur’s costs of production are determined by the prices required to bid the necessary resources away from alternative uses.
The speaker went on to say that those prices will be equal to the value that the resources could create in their next-best alternate use. Because the price of purchasing resources measures this opportunity cost— the value of the forgone alternatives—the profit entrepreneurs make reflects the amount by which they have increased the value generated by the resources under their control. This is the change said Ms. Wickramasingha.
APIIT has staged top business personalities weekly in the year 2022 to address the country via the “APIIT MBA Diaries” which so far Included personalities such as Global branding guru Simon Anholt, Unilever Chairperson Hajar Alifafi, Ambassordor to China Palitha Kohonna, Nestle Managing Director Fabrice Cavallin and very recently the Sri Lankan Ambassordor to Belgium, Luxembourg and Head of the Mission to European Union Grace Asiriwathan, The former chairman of Sri Lanka Bar Council Presidents Counsel Geoff Alagaratnam Group CEO of Dialog Supun Weerasinghe and Ambassordor to United Kingdom Saroja Sirisena.
The new MBA of Staffordshire University that has been launched in 2022, is offered for the February 2022 intake which consist of subject areas – Marketing Innovation, Entrepreneurship and International Business. The logic for these subjects to be highlighted is because the consumer has gone through radical change and this has resulted in companies having to innovate/renovate their product range whilst the foreign currency issue has made it mandatory for companies having to go global. On each of this criteria we need entrepreneurship which is the center of the new learning experience said Dr Rohantha Athukorala Board Director of Asia Pacific Institute of Technology( APIIT).
Commenting on the new virus Omricon, Dr Athukorala said we must think ‘ contemporary’.Humanity has learned a lot about the coronavirus in the past two years. Masks, social distancing and, most of all, vaccines have proved effective in curbing its spread. Yet one lesson has not sunk in: long-lasting travel restrictions are mostly futile.
The behavior we must demonstrate in the new Sri Lanka is that Get vaccinated, learn to Test if we are having any symptoms and then get the treatment required. If we do not have this behaviour there is no point of all the education in the world. At APIIT we took the high ground and became the 1st campus to be Covid-19 control certified. A new certification that was launched by SLSI in partnership with Rotary. We are ready to face the challenges of Omricon in 2022 he said.
This is the new attitude required in the world to drive business growth and economic revival. We Instill this in an MBA graduate at APIIT so that when they go back to the business entity, they are ready to be the new CEO a of the organisation said Dr Athukorala.
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