Business guru Charan in Sri Lanka

Channa Bandara Wijekoon

Dr. Ram Charan a top notch business advisor who is famous in the world of business said, Sri Lanka is now on the growth phase and companies need to position themselves to be geared to forge ahead to the next level of development.

“Companies must have lasting business models and must integrate their core activities in order to be more customer oriented and productivity oriented”, he said.

Brandix Lanka, one of the leading apparel exporters to the US market and Europe has got him down from US to seek vital inputs to upgrade their business to have more productivity and customer orientation.

Charan said a company should not go by the GDP figures and especially in today’s volatile economic context, companies must be always aware of change in markets which provides a window to cater to these changes.

Talking of the apparel industry he said, before venturing into introducing unique brands, a country should exploit other areas such as FTA which gear the country to be a mega supplier.

He said Vietnam and Indonesia has a FTA with Japan, which promotes economies of scale and increase in production. Export ratio between Sri Lanka and Singapore is 7bn to 39bn. Sri Lanka exports US$ 1.7bn worth apparels to the US while Chinese export volume of apparels to US is US$ 30bn.

There is huge potential for apparel exporters, he said.

Charan has worked as a consultant behind the scenes in many international businesses including GE, Verion, Novartis, Dupont, KLM and Bank of America.

He has made presentations to around 400 CEOs in India in February this year.