Keells Food appoints 4 new directors to Board

Keells Food Products Plc has made four new appointments to its Board of Directors.

The four new Non Executive Directors are Shehara De Silva, Amal Sanderatne, Pravir Samarasinghe and Indrajit Samarajiva.

The new appointments follow the resignation of Ranil Pieris, Harsha Amarasekera PC, Eardley Perera and Preethi Jayawardena having served over 9 years on the Keells Food Board.

Shehara De Silva is an international branding and communication specialist with a track record of market development in East Asia and Sri Lanka. She has been behind the success of several regional and Fortune 500 multinational brands. Shehara worked with Omnicom related companies as Director Planning Naga DDB in Kuala Lumpur and later Managing Director of Interbrand Malaysia. Interbrand is the world’s leading bran consultancy. She rose to Group Director Strategy of Foetus International with oversight over a spectrum of companies in digital and interactive marketing, PR and marketing communication. She was deputy Director General of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka. She has consulted for the UN/ILO, USAID etc focusing on gender and competitiveness. She has helped several Sri Lankan corporates through transformation agendas - Singer in retail, NDB in banking and Janashakthi in insurance.

Among brands she has worked on include Mobil, Cadbury, Nestle, American Express, Hasbro, Pepsi, Volkswagen, F&N, Anchor, Rathi, Kohomba, Bank Negara, NDB, Janashakthi, Singer, Mercedes, Tourism Malaysia, IIT and Emojot Inc.

Shehara serves on the Board of the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust, and the Music Project and was previously on the boards of Arthur C Clarke Institute of Modern Technologies and Eagle Fund Management.

Amal Sanderatne, is the founder and CEO of Frontier Research, a provider of time efficient economic, industry and company research and curated information services that was started in 2003.

Prior to founding Frontier Research, Amal worked as a consultant for DFCC Bank as the senior transaction advisor for the Sri Lanka Telecom IPO in 2002.

He was the head of Research of JP Morgan/Jardine Fleming in Sri Lanka. He was later transferred to Singapore and headed JP Morgan’s Asia Pacific ADR Research and also managed the research of the Hong Kong based Access Products Group.

He is a graduate in Economics from the London School of Economics and is a CFA Charterholder.

Pravir Samarasinghe has 30 years of professional and commercial experience and has served on the Boards of several public listed and unlisted companies.

He is a Fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants UK and holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration. 

Samarasinghe is the Chairman of the EFC Affiliated Associations Group and Condominium Developers Association of Sri Lanka. He was the former Chairman of Industrial Association of Sri Lanka, the Sri Lanka Institute of Directors and past president CIMA Sri Lanka Division and former council member of CIMA Global. He is also a committee member of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and the Employers Federation of Ceylon.

He is at present Managing Director/CEO of Overseas Realty Plc.

Indrajit Samarajiva is the co-founder of YAMU, one of Sri Lanka’s leading startups and a media platform centred around food and culture. He has experience moving organisations online something he has helped do at Dialog Axiata, The Sunday Leader, Sarvodaya and LIRNEsia. He studied Cognitive Science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

His personal projects include Kottu - a blog aggregator with over 1,500 members and indi.ca, at one time the most prominent English language blog in Sri Lanka.

With the latest appointments the Board of Keells Food Products Plc comprises of Susantha Ratnayake (Chairman), Ajit Gunewardene, Ronnie Peiris, Jit Gunaratne, M.D. De Silva, Shehara De Silva, Indrajit Samarajiva, Pravir Samarasinghe and Amal Sanderatne.