Reverse engineering of innovations an opportunity for SL
View(s):Reverse engineering innovations and making them more cost effective and customer accessible is an opportunity for Sri Lankan businesses, according to Nathan Sivagananathan, the Chief Executive Officer of MAS Designs.
Further, he also cited examples including Tata’s Nano car, Dialog’s prepaid offerings and Unilever’s shampoo sachets, which took up reverse engineering and kept the consumers and what they wanted in mind and, as a result, garnered significant market opportunities.
Making these comments as the keynote speaker at the recent launch of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce’s Young Member’s Forum in Colombo, Mr. Sivagananathan also remarked that “Sri Lanka is at that point where innovation and entrepreneurship is really taking off”.
“I think that the economy is in such a great place, and I feel that the opportunities for a young individual are there, and hence I completely endorse the forums that are being formed within the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce for entrepreneurship and innovation. The GDP growth of US$7,000 will only come with the starting of small businesses and business ideas,”said Mr. Sivagananathan.
Adding to this, he also stated, “Today, we have no excuses, we have a great environment, we have great infrastructure, and the GDP growth in the country is increasing at a rate. The consumers are also willing to spend, I was really shocked by some of the feedback that I had from some of the factories when I visit ed them. They would actually like to shop at ODEL, they would actually like to go and shop at Keells. And our mindset of a sewing operator was that they would go to the pola and buy their vegetables. No. The answer is no. They actually would like to aspire and shop at these places and that shows us that there is an opportunity for consumerism in Sri Lanka”.
At the same time, Mr. Sivagananathan also commented that the “fact that we have so much of exports in this country also gives us an understanding of a better quality of product, an understanding that quality and price is a key driver. And I don’t think that people today look for bargains as much as they used to. They prefer to pay a decent amount for something good and also look at how they can aspire to be something else. And we should encourage the middle class to aspire to be in the upper quartile of this country”.
“We should try and build businesses that are not only for one per cent of this country, we should build businesses for 60-70 per cent of this country.
And the mobile phone and Internet access ability today gives us that opportunity. Today is probably the first time in our history when we have the freedom to invest, freedom to start a business. And also probably the cost of starting a business has never been so low. Whether it is a small business idea that you want to put up on the Internet and start a business, or whether it is a company that you want to form”. (JH)