The dreamer is gone, but the dream lives on
Amjad Khan Chowdhury had a dream when he forayed into the nascent food processing industry in 1991: that one day the produce of Bangladeshi farmers would be served on the dining tables in Europe.
It only took him five years to reach that goal: in 1996 he made his maiden export and it happened to be to France. It is an achievement that very few exporters can boast of to date.
“That dream has been fulfilled -- whether it is chinigura rice, spices, mango drinks or snacks,” Chowdhury, founder of Pran Group, told The Daily Star in 2010. “That 'Made in Bangladesh' label is like the flag of Bangladesh.”
Chowdhury passed away in the United States yesterday, at the age of 75 after a long battle with heart diseases and diabetes.
Pran, a household name in Bangladesh, now exports products to 106 countries, reaching about 300 million customers. It earned about $150 million in exports in fiscal 2013-14, according to data from the company. It is also the country's biggest food processor.
Chowdhury started his journey as an entrepreneur in 1981, after retiring from the Bangladesh Army, by setting up a small company, Rangpur Foundry Ltd or RFL, to make irrigation pumps.
RFL has a variety of products such as pumps, tube-wells, gas stoves and has achieved the prestige as the largest cast iron foundry and light-engineering workshop in the country.
Then in 1985 he stumbled upon the idea of Pran and leased six acres of land in Narsingdi.
Initially, the land was used to cultivate papaya, banana, pineapple and other crops, which were brought to the market fresh.
But the retired army major found it frustrating that a good harvest often did not mean a fair price due to gluts in the market.
“I thought to myself, this is funny. It is like: despite being a good student and doing well in exams, you are given negative or low marks,” Chowdhury said in the 2010 interview.
He had then realised that the key to agriculture lay in increasing their shelf lives. Subsequently, he had decided to concentrate on processing the agricultural commodities instead of marketing them immediately.
But preservation and processing were not commonplace in Bangladesh in comparison to northern South Asia or the colder parts of the world, where the vegetables and other agro-commodities are preserved for sustenance during the long winter season.
To learn the trade, Chowdhury had travelled to Thailand, Taiwan, India, Pakistan and the US.
“That was the turning point in my life,” said Chowdhury, who bet on Bangladesh's comparative advantage in tropical climate, fertile soil and ample sunshine.
He began with sliced pineapples in canned form and then moved on to mango drink, jams and jellies, with a plan to cater to both the domestic and foreign consumers.
“It took us many years to generate profits through agro-processing.” Now, Pran's products range from spices to snacks, confectionary, beverages and dairy.
The company also formed relationships with farmers who supply mangoes, mung beans, aromatic rice, tomatoes, peanuts and other commodities for processing.
In the final years of his life, Chowdhury had developed a passion for the dairy industry, a sector in which Bangladesh lags behind India and Pakistan, despite having the highest number of cows per square kilometre in the world.
It invested heavily in the sub-sector so that the farmers in the village can produce more milk by increasing the productivity of each animal.
For Chowdhury, job creation through setting up businesses was the best practice of corporate social responsibility.
Pran now employs about 60,000 people directly and about 100,000 farmers countrywide.
RFL, which diversified its operation into PVC category in 1996 and in plastic sector in 2003, is the market leader in all these three sectors: cast iron, PVC and plastic.
Chowdhury's work did not go unrecognised.
In 2011, The Daily Star and DHL honoured him as the Business Person of the Year through Bangladesh Business Awards for transforming a simple idea of producing agro-processed foods into one of the largest companies in Bangladesh. In 2012, Pran Group won HSBC Export Excellence Awards.
In recognition of his contribution towards earning foreign currency, Pran achieved “Best National Export Award” for eight consecutive fiscal years.
In recent times, Pran was awarded the “UDC BUSINESS AWARDS 2011” as the best food and beverage products manufacturer in Malaysia.
Chowdhury's passing shocked many of his contemporaries.
One of them, M Anis Ud Dowla, chairman of ACI Ltd, a business conglomerate, paid tributes to Chowdhury, a two-time president of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce of Industry.
“He did an excellent job for the rural economy by way of creating agro-processing industry. His success in the export market is very encouraging for us.”
Dowla, also a former president of MCCI, met Chowdhury last month for the last time.
“He was a nice person and very disciplined. He would always make people around him happy. We are deeply shocked. We will miss him.”
Finance Minister AMA Muhith also expressed condolences over his death.
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