In February 1948, Sri Lanka (then a British colony called Ceylon) achieved independence. The same year, visionary entrepreneur Sheikh Hassanally Esufally, driven by his interest in medicine and community service, established Hemas (Drugs) Ltd. After 75 years, Hemas Group today stands high as the island nation’s business identity to the world, having footprints in over 20 countries, including Bangladesh and India, with its portfolios expanding from consumer brands to healthcare services, from aviation to maritime businesses.
When Sheikh Hassanally Esufally’s great-granddaughter Sabrina Esufally stepped into the upper rungs of the Hemas group’s leadership by taking the mantle of the Managing Director of Hemas Consumer Brands early last year, her country was going through the worst economic downturn since its independence. The timing couldn’t be any worse. In her own words: “I took charge in April 2022 and a month later Sri Lanka got its currency devalued by as much as 100%.”
One thing Sabrina and Sri Lanka have in common is an indomitable spirit to face the economic crisis, without bowing down to challenges. After a year and a half, both Sri Lanka, as a nation, and Hemas, as a publicly listed leading South Asian conglomerate, are rebounding slowly but surely. But this path has never been smooth, and they had to cross many hurdles in their desperate pursuits to bounce back.
Sabrina Esufally, who is also an attorney of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, joined the Hemas group in 2019, where she headed Business Development at Morison PLC, the group’s pharmaceutical and OTC manufacturing vertical. She then transitioned to Hemas Consumer Brands in 2020, where she drove portfolio growth and brand development in the emerging categories of beauty and wellness.
Sabrina, passionate about creating brands that innovate and advocate for a more equitable society, had her time imagining and innovating on how to cope with a new reality where the consumers on her Indian Ocean island nation were all struggling with their fast eroding purchasing capacity during the best part of 2022.
Talking to Dhaka Tribune last week, Sabrina said: “That was definitely a hard time. Families were making hard choices on what to buy, what to forgo, what to cut costs in and what to adjust.”
“One thing we found even in that trying time was that mothers having kids below 5-yrs of age were not compromising on their babies’ needs. We reoriented our supply chain, emboldened our relationship with retailers, increased efficiency of our work, and asked our consumers questions on which features of our products they like to pay for and which they rather like to let go,” explained Sabrina, who holds a First Class Honours from the University of Durham, UK, and an LLM from Harvard Law School.
Hemas customized its product ranges so that many of its loyal customers still found a way to price adjust and choose from their high-end and low-end options. “That’s the time we also gave more attention on how to offer our products and services by employing better technologies, quality and purity.”
With reference to the Bangladesh market, Group CEO of Hemas Holdings PLC, Kasturi Chellaraja Wilson, said: “We regained the second slot after sliding, for some time, down to the 5th position, in the hair oil segment in your country.”
Hemas’ Kumarika brand hair oil has production and distribution all over Bangladesh. Currently, it is second to Marico’s Parachute in the hair oil segment.
Kasturi, a former national basketball captain and the first ever Sri Lankan woman to discharge the responsibility of Group CEO in a public listed company, said Hemas is a homegrown brand that beats Uniliver in many brand segments in Sri Lanka.
Reforms, right policy decisions can make a difference
Cash-strapped and debt-ridden Sri Lanka, which declared bankruptcy last year, started showing early signs of economic recovery as early as the middle of this year. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in June this year that there were "tentative signs of improvement" but added that recovery remains challenging and Colombo must pursue painful reforms.
Early last year, Sri Lanka experienced a record low in its tax-GDP ratio (6.7%), which has since rebounded to reach over 10% right now.
Speaking to a group of journalists in Colombo recently, the Word Bank’s Country Manager for the Maldives and Sri Lanka, Chiyo Kanda, was very appreciative of Sri Lanka’s efforts to give cushion to the poorest in the forms of various special protection measures.
Ambassador Prasad Kariyawasam is a former foreign secretary of Sri Lanka, and has held several key diplomatic assignments, including as Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United States and High Commissioner to India, Bhutan and ambassador to Afghanistan.
He told Dhaka Tribune how crucial it was for Sri Lanka to get a good amount of loans from its South Asian neighbours, Bangladesh and India, last year. Sri Lanka has recently not only paid back the principal ($200 million) to Bangladesh but also the interest amount of $22 million – a small but good reflection of Sri Lanka’s renewed ability to maintain economic discipline.
Ambassador Prasad believes his country would never have fallen to such an economic crisis in the first place had there been enough parliamentary institutional capacity to oversee issues of debt management, fiscal balance, structural endemic issues and reforms, etc. “An overwhelming 82% of our land resources are state-owned. Corrupt practices and non-transparency were rampant. There was serious public distrust of political leaders, lack of skilled manpower and brain drain – all those boiled down to the economic hardship that we experienced last year.”
He is, however, a firm believer that with reforms and right policy decisions gradually put in place things could go better from here with more efforts on improving the ‘ease of doing business’ indicator.
Sri Lanka’s current recovery path also aligns well with some of the international knowledge development and funding agencies’ overarching goal for economic integration in the South Asian region.
The World Bank’s South Asia Regional Integration, Cooperation and Engagement (SA RICE 2020-25), as an instance, paves way for a region-wide approach in South Asia, which goes well with Sri Lanka’s efforts to benefit from increased trade within the region and more connectivity in terms of business, investment, electricity, building resilience, etc.
