A sit down with Bant Breen on the growth and development of Olam Agri.
I recently sat down with Sujay Sarkar on The UNCAGED Show to discuss his career as Senior Vice President and Group Head of Corporate Finance at Olam Agri, a leading food and agri-business supplying food, ingredients, feed, and fiber to 20,900 customers worldwide. This is an edited excerpt from our discussion.
Bant Breen:
Welcome to Uncaged. Today we’re speaking with Sujay Sarkar. Sujay is joining us from Dubai today. He is the senior vice president and group head of corporate finance at really a major global player. We’ll talk a little bit about that global player, Olam Agri, and the work that they’re doing, but we’re also going to be talking a little bit more today about Sujay and the broader, I’d say, financial world that we see ourselves in right now going into 2024. It’s the beginning of a new year, new exciting trends that we have to face and deal with. So, we’ll talk a little bit more about that as well. But before we get there, Sujay, tell us a little bit about you and your background.
Sujay Sarkar:
Sure. So, I went to Harvard accounting education. I started off my career in India. I spent the first ten years of my working life in India, in New Delhi, the capital. So, I worked across the Bengal industry segments in that state before I moved to Africa, joined Olam in December of 2010 and spent around 11 years in Africa living and working in different countries, primarily on the West African coast. I traveled extensively across the continent, going to most countries in Africa, and loved my time there. Now we have shifted to Dubai and have been there for two and a half years. And currently, I’m the head of corporate finance.
Bant Breen:
So just tell me a little bit quickly about Olam Agri and the space that you’re focused on right now.
Sujay Sarkar:
So Olam group is a global major and agri commodities. We have a wide gamut of trading operations wherein we trade all types of commodities from cocoa, coffee, cashews, cotton, rice, grains, etc. Olam Agri is one of the operating groups within the land group board, and this has an abundance of grains, rice, cotton, wood products, and rubber as the primary business segments we do multi-million tons of trading across the globe and these commodities as well as we also have multiple manufacturing processing facilities globally. Currently, we have a presence in some 35, 36 countries and yeah, we have a major presence in Africa.
Bant Breen:
Yeah, it’s really interesting. And, you know, I would say, Sujay, that we’re living in a moment where I’d say logistics, supply chain and agriculture included, have been tried and tested. And a million times, you know, my younger son had a summer internship at a commodities exchange for wheat, and it just kind of processing the whole wheat space has been fascinating. So, I can only imagine the complexities of the logistics over the last couple of years that you and the team have faced there. And I think it puts you in a really interesting position to talk a little bit about what you’re seeing from kind of a broader macroeconomic perspective here in 2024. I mean, we’ve seen all of the speeches coming out of Davos this week and we’re seeing all of the changes going forward. What are you seeing out there for 2024?
Sujay Sarkar:
Yeah, I think getting ready for it is shaping up to be a very, very interesting year. So, for me, I think the key themes would be the multiple elections coming up across the globe, starting with the US, UK, India, Indonesia, multiple countries in Africa, and in the European Parliament, both I guess headed for elections. So, the outcome of all of these elections has major implications in terms of what is the election and the priorities of the different governments across the world and you know, we are starting this year with one of the highest-ever anticipated themes across the globe. Still, inflation is rating quite high, and I don’t expect the investments to come off anytime soon. While there are a lot of people saying that maybe the third ECB will start cutting the rates, perhaps in Q2 of this year. My personal belief is that it is going to happen in the second half of 2024. So, the real cost of funding is going to remain quite high. So, the supply chain complexity and the challenges of managing that is I think, record high and is not going to get easier any time soon. So not only is there a lot of dislocation because of ongoing issues in China, but the economy is going down there. And Indiana has been our major manufacturing unit for supply and the rest of the world. But we also have issues because of the ongoing budget plan for Israel, Palestine, and more. And now the recent issues of the attacks on all the ships happening from the pirates there. So, I believe that companies that have diversified their sourcing locations and have moved from a just-in-time approach to a just-in-case approach to inventory management are better prepared for the world at large.
Bant Breen:
That is so true. Well, thank you so much, Sujay, for being on Uncaged. I really enjoyed our conversation, and look forward to having you back on the show.
To see the full interview on the Uncaged YouTube channel, go to:
