How Sapphire Foods is operating in Sri Lanka’s challenging environment

Sanjay Purohit, Group CEO, Sapphire Foods

Even as Sri Lanka struggles with its worst financial crisis ever and faces acute shortage of several key products, including fuel, Sapphire Foods, a franchisee of Yum! Brands, which operates KFC and Pizza Hut stores in the country, is confident of revival.

“We spoke to a lot of young markets who have gone through similar situations at a country level. All of them come back and say double down on the business. It is a great opportunity to actually build a very strong competitive position. Our execution advantages are playing out in this market,” Sanjay Purohit, Group CEO, Sapphire Foods, said in a conversation with Anuradha Sengupta in an episode on the ‘Life After Listing’ show.

“I was speaking to the Sri Lankan team yesterday. And they are hopeful of things stabilising over the next four, six months,” he added.

Meanwhile, Purohit said, given that the country has a large expat population in the Gulf countries, the crisis has led to huge remittances from these nations.

According to Purohit, this has led to a lot of money in consumers’ hands and there is also willingness to spend. “People cannot cook at home as there is no gas, no fuel. So, they eat out,” he added.

Although the company has reduced its hours of operations, it still has to make a lot of efforts to keep the stores open. For instance, one of its employees is always at the fuel pump to get diesel to run its stores in the wake of power cuts.

“Unless there is a curfew, we are operating our stores,” Purohit added.

The company will also continue to expand its stores in the country. Currently, it operates 95 outlets in the island nation and plans to launch 95 more stores in the next three-four years.

Long queues have been reported at petrol and diesel stations in Sri Lanka as the country’s state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corp failed to secure fresh supplies of fuel given its large overdue payments to suppliers. The country declared June 17 a public holiday as it ran out of fuel.