By Channa Fernandopulle
Unilever’s new Chairperson for its Sri Lankan business operation, Shazia Syed spoke with Mirror Business about her personal experience in Pakistan, where she was the first Pakistani woman to head Unilever’s Sales division and Unilever’s expectations for the coming year. Excerpts:

Q: Could you tell me a little bit about your background in general and your history with Unilever?
I was born and raised in Pakistan and completed my MBA there. I joined Unilever in October 1989 as a management trainee and I’ve been with the company ever since.
I was also sent to Vietnam during my tenure for about 3 years. That was a big adventure, it was a big, exciting country and I was assigned to look after Unilever’s business, it was very fast growing and the challenge was to move at that pace to service the consumer.
I’ve got a flavor of all the key categories of Unilever, I’ve worked in home and personal care, in beverages and refreshments, and my last assignment was in sales.
I was the first Pakistani woman to head sales for Pakistan and after that assignment I landed in Sri Lanka around September 30th to head the business here.






Q: And at that time what observations have you made about the Sri Lankan market and how is it different from your experience in Pakistan?
I think even though it’s a smaller market in terms of population size, it is still a more affluent market in respect of per capita income that Sri Lankans have at their disposal.

Secondly the big ammunition that the consumer has here is the level of education which is of course dramatically different to South Asia and that’s the big opportunity area here as opposed to other South Asian and other developing countries.

It exists in South Asia but in a lot of ways it’s far superior in terms of the consumer regimes. The Sri Lanka consumer is more evolved in terms of their knowledge of various regimes in health and hygiene, about home care, personal grooming, childcare and the like.

In that respect, the challenge that any consumer goods company like ourselves has I that we have to really make sure that we match the quality of our products and our product innovation and the range of products to match the evolving needs of the Sri Lankan consumer.

Overall Unilever has to be conscious of the fact that the Sri Lankan consumer is more evolved so we have to recognize that what their needs are and make sure that we service them and be there at the right time.

In that respect I think that the Sri Lankan market presents a huge opportunity we look at our range, and I think Unilever Sri Lanka has risen to the challenge. Our brand new factory in Horana is geared to meet the challenge in terms of product line, quality and capacity and future needs.

Also in terms of understanding, the Unilever brand is well known to the Sri Lankan consumer and Unilever also has been in Sri Lanka for a very long time and we have a finger on the pulse of the Sri Lankan consumer. So we’re well aware of the opportunities and needs for this market and our future plans are well in place to take advantage of this.





Q: Can you tell us what your brand portfolio is like in Sri Lanka and can we expect this to expand with any new product ranges etc.?
Our portfolio consists of our cornerstone brands that are very well established and then there are also our new stars. For example we have our cornerstone brands in the laundry portfolio with Sunlight and Surf Excel; they’re well known household names. They are what we call our billionaire brands.

Keeping in mind the trends and the changing needs of our consumers we’ve also launched a range of other products like the Ponds portfolio with face washes, and the laundry liquid and deodorants. So if you look at our portfolio, our real portfolio is now more or less complete and the task now is in terms of market development and communicating and creating the need for these portfolios and informing the consumer about what these new products can do for them. So really the next few years are really going to see these new stars converted into our cornerstone brands.

With a sizeable women working force here, another trend that we can see is the development of the beauty product portfolio.

With education and rising income levels, working women can have their own independent income so it’s a matter of joining the dots and the regimes will develop in terms of face wash, night creams, day creams. These are the things that we’ll see the consumers demanding for as we go along as this market develops further.
Salons are also growing in number and they’re also helping us in educating the consumer about how to maintain themselves and I can clearly see the health awareness is very much there and these are some of the trends that will help us pave our way in the future.





Q: Tell us a bit about the new factory in Horana and also how Unilever operates in terms of distribution networks?
With the establishment of our new manufacturing facility in Horana,  we no produce about  95 percent of our portfolio in-house and then we distribute through two mediums, the traditional trade with family grocers, then the small corner shops where people go to top up and generally in the neighborhood and we also go to modern trade which is supermarket chains etc and the government stores.

Our distribution is therefore one of our key strengths. We cover all channels and that is based on the shopper mission.




Q: You’ve spoken about some of the strengths in the Sri Lankan market but what are some of the challenges you see going forward?
Our dependence on imports was one of the key challenges, we’ve tried to take care of that but we have realized that there are certain external costs and global trends that we need to mitigate.

We have to constantly manage portfolio and through the various pack-sizes and price points, so that we can fit into the budgets of consumers who can buy a product of their aspiration and not to downgrade so we’re trying to make sure that customers are retained within our portfolio by making sure that we deal with functionality so the consumer knows that if its expensive that they’re still paying for quality.




 Q: Can you give us an indication of how well Unilever brands have been faring in the recent past?
When we look at our own brand health, most of our brands are in very good shape with many of ours being household names.

 We’ve spent very good money on trying to support these brands through media and they stand at the top of the consumers’ mind.

 There were certain hurdles and business disruptions when we had to move our factory, but now that it is up and running again we are confident that this will be our competitive edge.

We have bitten the bullet in going for this move and we’re confident it was the right thing to do. So many issues have been mitigates and 2014 is looking very good and we have plans in place to really improve performance over the coming year.





Q: Overall you see an improving retail sentiment and sales figures over the next year?
Yes. The market if you look around is clearly picking up and even on a global level input costs have stabilized, so I think definitely the retail sentiment will improve.





Q: Lastly, how different is it for you coming from Pakistan to Sri Lanka?
I think it’s not really a dramatic shock to the system. It’s very similar and there is no cultural shock really to speak of.

The people are very friendly and accessible and they make themselves understood. Looking at the people in the company they are very driven and they understand the tasks at hand and the job that needs to be done so it is very easy to get aligned.

There is also very good talent in the country and infrastructure is in place so for any person to come to a country they look at safety first.

Sri Lanka is now a very settled safe place and next they look at schooling infrastructure. You have a relatively sound local and international education system and. Also it’s a very beautiful country so overall I think it’s a very desirable place to come to.

Pix by Pradeep Pathirana