Gamini Gunasekera a chemical engineer turned entrepreneur, currently heading a leading chemical manufacturing and trading company in Sri Lanka, reached the pinnacle of his career when he was appointed as the Managing Director of Union Carbide Lanka Limited in the year 2000.

Q: What would you say are secrets to your success?

I always believe that effective and efficient work will bring positive results. My formula for success is continually adding value to my employees by investing in their training, education and skills development. I always emphasize that employees should act like business owners.

Q: What message do you have for young entrepreneurs?

You have to identify your strengths and accordingly plan your future activities. These activities should be planned with the expectation of growth. The problem I’ve seen is that in the micro or small level, you have many entrepreneurs and many start ups.

But the majority of them are unable to grow up to medium or large level, having had either stagnated or disappeared from business. At the micro level, the load is small. There’s less to maintain. But after that, they don’t understand what their strength is.

They plan big capital investments, they get into trouble and they vanish. So, first look at your strengths and then plan your activities.
Constant monitoring is very essential to ensure that the organization achieves the desired goals. My theory is value creation. Human resource is also very important. They add value to your bottom line. So you have to add value to your employees.