Three Sinha opens Concept Centre, new head office
It is very rarely that a man achieves his objectives in life solely by hard work, dedication and sacrifice. Three Sinha Industries (Pvt.) Limited Chairman and Managing Director M.A. Manjula Ariyarakumara is such a fortunate man. On the occasion of the opening of the new Concept Centre and head office premises of Three Sinha Industries (Pvt.) Limited, he revealed the hard struggle he had to face to bring his company to the level of a top-class industrial organisation in Sri Lanka.
“My father, the late M.A. Ariyadasa, passed away in the year 1989 and being the eldest in the family, I had no alternative but to take up the running of his lathe machine workshop. Then, just six months later, I gave the lathe machine workshop to my younger brother and started my own company, Three Sinha Industries (Pvt.) Limited, manufacturing roller shutters as a one man operation. At the inception, the operations of Three Sinha Industries (Pvt.) Limited was entirely handled by me. I had to accept orders, buy the raw material, drive the lorry transporting it to my workshop, fashion the roller shutters myself, deliver them to my clients and install them all by myself. In the mornings I had to go through the newspapers searching for ten- ders, draft tender documents, get them typed at one of the small typing shops that were in Borella those days and post them.”
After some time of operation, he noticed that the local suppliers of raw material for roller shutters were supplying his competitors also and they were able to dictate prices and other terms to roller shutter manufacturers. So, he started searching the Internet for roller shutter raw material suppliers in other countries and found an Australian company, Steel Link Engineering in the year 2002, corresponded with them and entered into collaboration with them to manufacture roller doors, a construction item of great demand from architects and builders, in Sri Lanka.
“By this time, I had expanded my workforce and Three Sinha had started to earn a reputation for roller doors. Three Sinha became the exclusive agent for Steel-Link roller doors in Sri Lanka in the year 2004. Now we have become the No. 1 manufacturer and supplier of roller doors in Sri Lanka. We constantly upgrade our technical knowledge and in the matter of a significant change in the manufacturing I go to our collaborators and learn the procedure and come back and train my workmen or they send a team to our company to train our people.
I have captained my school, D.S. Senanayake College, Colombo in rugby and I think the leadership qualities and perseverance I garnered on the sports field have stood me in good stead in my endeavours in the business field. And I honed my organisational skills and managed to build many contacts while holding the position of President in the D.S. Senanayake College Senior Old Boys’ Association.”
“To my knowledge, Three Sinha is the only company in Sri Lanka with the chairman and managing director’s mobile telephone number as the company’s hotline. That way, I can keep my fingers on the pulse of the company.”
Today, Three Sinha is employing about 50 office staff and 200 factory staff. It has branches in Galle, Matara and Pilimatalawa and at all Holcim Maha Gedara sales outlets.
“I constructed the Three Sinha Concept Centre and head office in Nawinna and Rajagiriya with the express purpose of giving the customers who visit us an education on roller doors and our other products. We also have a specially constructed display truck demonstrating our various products and their uses. We can send the display truck or one of our representatives, to a customer within a matter of minutes. We have dispelled many a misconception the public had about roller doors.”