At thirty six Chris Persaud could easily be mistaken for a laid back, carefree post-graduate hopeful with a host of ideas and a dream of one day taking a tailor-made place within a niche suited to his talents…………except that Chris may have already found his niche in business through a company which he built from ground up and which in a few short years has moved quietly close to the very top of Guyana’s agro-processing sector.
No major agro processing event, going back to GuyExpo and including last September’s Guyana Trade and Investment Exhibition (GuyTIE) has escaped the attention of UMAMI nor has any opportunity to grow the market share of the company, either at home or abroad failed to catch the eye of the company’s astute proprietor. As if to make the point as emphatically as he can he presses the fingers of one hand deliberately against those of the other, counting off the places in which UMAMI has realised market penetra-tion……….”Tortola, St. Croix, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, the USA,” he says, bending the pressed fingers back for emphasis. As of December, thanks to successful negotiations realised at GuyTIE in September, Barbados will be added to that list. Arising out of the Green Expo of a week ago a Trinidad and Tobago market could be opening up shortly.