Ram Bajekal

Group Chief Executive Officer
FMF Foods Group of Companies,
Suva.

Ram Bajekal is a Chartered Accountant from India and a Fulbright Fellow in Management Studies from the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.

He has spent most of his working life in India with diverse organizations such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Hindustan Photo Films, Unilever Group and the Murugappa Group. This is his second stint in Fiji, having worked here between 2004 and 2006 with the Carpenters Group, during which time he also visited PNG extensively. After 25 years of what he calls corporate sector "rat race", Ram took a three year sabbatical to work with an NGO in rural India, imparting business skills to low-income communities engaged in micro-enterprise. He returned to Fiji in 2009 to take up an assignment with the FMF Group and says it is his fondness for Fiji and the work-life balance it provides that tempted him back to the corporate world.

Ram is very fond of sports and spends his afternoons playing one of many games he loves, being golf, cricket, hockey or most recently, badminton. He lives in Suva with his wife Ameeta and their dog Basanti.

Topic :"Exports - a key to sustainability at FMF"

Synopsis:

The smallness of a market and its geographic remoteness poses significant challenges to a manufacturing entity not only in growth, but also in optimizing production, productivity and profitability. What are some of the challenges FMF Foods Ltd faces in this regard and what are they doing to overcome these? How are they meeting customer expectations and what are the internal processes they deploy?