Palmyrah products promoted overseas with USD 2 Mn revenue target

In a bid to promote Palmyrah products in India, Vinayagam Associates CEO, Madurai, T. Vinayaga Murugesan has been appointed a Brand Ambassador.

Chairman Palmyrah Development Board Krishantha Pathiraja said that they are looking to aggressively promote Palmyrah products all over the world and last year generated income of nearly USD 50,000 from exporting Palmyrah toddy to France. We are looking to increase this to over USD 2 million this year and in addition to the planned aggressive marketing campaign to Europe this year, we are also looking at the South Indian market and beyond as well.”

It’s to meet this objective that we appointed Vinayaga Murugesan who also successfully operates an e-Commerce wholesale/retail platform, ‘DigiRiver.in’ and through it markets Palmyrah toddy and related products.”

Pathiraja said that Vinayaga Murugesan has already contacted leading supermarket chains and leading hotels. “He has already talked with ITC hotels which has 115 hotels in 80 destinations across six distinct brands in India as well and the response is very positive.”

Vinayaga Murugesan who was in Sri Lanka recently in Colombo told ‘Daily News Business’ he appreciated the hard work done by Palmyrah Development Board to promote their products. “After witnessing this progress I also felt that India too could do more and value addition of some of the current Palmyrah based products.”

To this end I will be opening a Palmyrah R&D Centre in Madurai this year as a joint venture with Palmyrah Development Board Research institute Jaffna.

“Through this current Palmyrah products made in India could get better value addition which in turn will increase quality and manufacturers could get additional revenue. With a better product some of these can be exported as well.” He said that this year they would be hosting a mega economic fair (Mela) in Madurai and would also be exhibiting some of the Sri Lanka made Palmyrah products including Toddy.”

He also said that he is looking at several investment opportunities in Sri Lanka in the leisure and real estate sector mainly to operate as Joint Ventures between investors in both countries.