Financial Times

Anyone going shopping to the Cargills supermarkets across Sri Lanka would have been surprised on Wednesday to find a notice saying “Sorry we are closed today.”

On Wednesday, the group that has revolutionized super-marketing in Sri Lanka mounted a gigantic logistics operation bussing more than 4,000 employees from all over to the Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium for the annual workers day.

The Cargill story from the field to the shelves is well known now but little is known about the founders of this concept who are what we would call ‘real entrepreneurs’. There are entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka but the ones who stick it out through thick and thin, or come what may are the ‘real ones”. Like Ranjit Page, the Cargills group deputy chairman who is fast growing to be a visionary and motivator in various areas in Sri Lanka’s development, these entrepreneurs have a larger interest at heart – the country.

That’s why Page’s first supermarket – where he got ideas from magazines and paper cuttings – was launched in 1983, a year no one would have been bold enough to invest, at least after the anti-Tamil riots in July.

That’s why the group has shown phenomenal growth in the past few years – not stopping even when Sri Lanka was more known for its violence and heightened tensions than as an investment base. That’s why the group is putting its money into Sri Lanka’s biggest meat processing factory – again as uncertainty looms ahead.

NOUS, one of our regular columnists, says Sri Lankan entrepreneurship has traditionally been timid - generally taking a makeshift and make do approach to investment. “It has also lacked imaginative vision - treading largely on well trodden paths. It has further lacked genuine commitment or dedication to an industry - preferring instead to take the path of conglomeration, which makes it possible to cut and run from an industry at the first sign of trouble, rather than innovate your way out of trouble or problems,” he says adding that consequently the country has not been served well by entrepreneurship.

Taking Page as an example, NOUS says that businesses that seek to be the best by being imaginative, bold and committed and long-termish serve the nation reverentially, while at the same growing in wealth and prestige. “In general, where men lack the courage to risk failure, nation-states have only hapless squalor to speak of.”

Page stays close to his workers, talks their language of “nangilas, mallilas, aiyalas and mamalas”, and motivates them to give their best to the company.

Quiet and low profile, the Cargills MD is also positive – even in the worst of times. “Machan, how are things today?” asked a friend recently during another uncertain day in Sri Lanka.

“Good, good ...”Page replied as he has done so over the years. That positiveness has led to tremendous growth for the company and rural communities, led to rapid expansion of jobs through the food chain and improved the quality of life of many villages where its 100-plus supermarkets are located. The Cargills model has even attracted the attention of the Asian Development Bank.

Last Wednesday was not only a celebration for the workers of Cargills but it was also the celebration of an entrepreneur whom Sri Lanka is going to hear a lot in the future on the forward path of development.