Creating Opportunities Amidst Covid-19

Re-working his supply chain strategy led to stronger consumer offerings, shares Abhay Sharma, director of Sonnamera Pte Ltd.

- Esther Faith Lew

Opportunities beckon for those who look beyond the crisis, and current turbulent times have forced Abhay Sharma, director of Sonnamera Pte Ltd to quickly find a solution when a 60-day lock-down closed off his key import source in India. As the COVID-19 situation escalated and started to cause world-wide alarm, Sharma changed gears.

“We actively reached out and formed relationships with brand-owners from Holland, Belgium, the United States and Australia. This expansion of our geographic reach has helped reduce our dependency on any single source of supply,” he says. He significantly increased imports from Italy and Holland by over 800 percent.

From a business perspective, that was a move that stabilised his company, and eventually led to the launch of new brands during the circuit breaker in Singapore. But as an importer and distributor of FMCG to the retail trade in Singapore, he faced the more pernicious issue of growing awareness and concern over food sources, and the risk of viral contamination in food products and packaging. It was an escalating concern in the community that he had to address.

“To tackle the worries that people have now over food safety, Sonnamera works with established brands that are leaders in their home markets, and have an existing robust export business. In addition, we are stringent in ensuring that these companies have all the necessary certification and quality control processes in place, which are typically required by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other food certification agencies across Europe and Asia,” says Sharma.