Cherisse Moe

In a mar­ket built on cen­turies-old cus­toms, bring­ing a mod­ern twist to sea­son­al cel­e­bra­tions re­quires vi­sion and a whole lot of re­silience. En­ter 23-year-old Shaz­ara Ram­nar­ine, an en­tre­pre­neur who has shown both. Armed with a back­ground in busi­ness man­age­ment and cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing her mas­ter’s at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bed­ford­shire, she cap­tured me­dia at­ten­tion last year by launch­ing wa­ter-ac­ti­vat­ed LED deyas—a con­ve­nient, flame-free al­ter­na­tive de­signed for con­tem­po­rary spaces, child and pet safe­ty, and weath­er-proof out­door dec­o­rat­ing.

While her prod­uct ex­pand­ed in­to ma­jor re­tail out­lets here at home and in Guyana, what stands out most is her eye for de­tail—ev­i­dent in this year’s en­hance­ments, in­clud­ing a more au­then­tic hue. From pitch­ing her idea to her moth­er, Sharona Ab­dul—an es­tab­lished busi­ness­woman in print­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing—to con­duct­ing hands-on prod­uct re­search, man­ag­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sup­ply lo­gis­tics, and act­ing on con­sumer feed­back for prac­ti­cal up­grades, Shaz­ara feels like her jour­ney is on­ly now be­gin­ning.

In this chat with We Life, the Tril­li­um In­ter­na­tion­al School alum­na talks about the rough patch­es, how far she’s come, and what she wants to do next.

We Life: What was the in­spi­ra­tion be­hind start­ing this ven­ture of wa­ter LED deyas?

SM: It be­gan with a de­sire to bring a fresh, prac­ti­cal op­tion to Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions while pre­serv­ing the beau­ty of a cher­ished tra­di­tion. As a prac­tis­ing Hin­du, I saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty to of­fer fam­i­lies an al­ter­na­tive to oil and wax-filled deyas. I al­ways em­pha­sise that Wa­ter LED Deyas are in­tend­ed strict­ly for dec­o­ra­tive pur­pos­es and should not be used as a sub­sti­tute for tra­di­tion­al oil-lit deyas in re­li­gious pu­jas.

We Life: This year the deyas are new and im­proved - can you walk us through what are some of those up­grades and why you made them?

SM: When the prod­uct sold out in 2025, I was de­light­ed and took this op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­prove. I in­tro­duced a re­al­is­tic clay colour and a flick­er­ing LED bulb that cre­ates a flame-like ef­fect, re­plac­ing the orig­i­nal steady light. I al­so in­tro­duced a lim­it­ed-edi­tion box fea­tur­ing 18 deyas in­stead of the usu­al 12, giv­ing cus­tomers six ex­tra lights to bright­en their ar­eas and cre­ate an even more beau­ti­ful fes­tive at­mos­phere. These changes were not made in iso­la­tion. I lis­tened close­ly to cus­tomers’ sug­ges­tions. To me, that is what good busi­ness is about: un­der­stand­ing what peo­ple val­ue and giv­ing them a bet­ter ex­pe­ri­ence.

We Life: What was the biggest chal­lenge in bring­ing some­thing so new to a very tra­di­tion­al Di­vali mar­ket, and how did peo­ple first re­act?

SM: One of the biggest chal­lenges was per­suad­ing my moth­er to sup­port my idea. I need­ed a strong mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, pro­fes­sion­al ad­ver­tis­ing, at­trac­tive pack­ag­ing and an ef­fec­tive dis­tri­b­u­tion plan, all of which had to be care­ful­ly con­sid­ered with­in my bud­get. With my moth­er’s ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, she im­me­di­ate­ly recog­nised the po­ten­tial of my idea and be­lieved in my vi­sion. Her con­fi­dence, sup­port and ex­per­tise were in­stru­men­tal in help­ing me bring it to life.

The pub­lic’s re­sponse was ex­treme­ly en­cour­ag­ing. Cus­tomers shared how much they ap­pre­ci­at­ed the con­ve­nience of the Wa­ter LED Deyas, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ab­sence of an ex­posed flame around chil­dren and pets and not hav­ing to wor­ry about flames be­ing ex­tin­guished by heavy winds or rain. Hear­ing these ex­pe­ri­ences re­in­forced my be­lief that in­no­va­tion can com­ple­ment tra­di­tion rather than re­place it.

We Life: Since you start­ed last year, how has the busi­ness ex­pand­ed and how have you evolved per­son­al­ly as a busi­ness own­er?

SM: One of the most ex­cit­ing de­vel­op­ments this year has been the growth in re­tail in­ter­est. Fol­low­ing the launch, sev­er­al new re­tail­ers ap­proached me about stock­ing the prod­uct. To­day, I am proud that my deyas are be­ing sold through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go and have al­so reached the Guyanese mar­ket. See­ing an idea de­vel­op in­to a prod­uct that is gain­ing recog­ni­tion be­yond our shores has been re­ward­ing.

For me, Wa­ter LED Deyas are more than a suc­cess­ful sea­son­al prod­uct. They are proof that a sim­ple idea can grow when you com­bine cre­ativ­i­ty with plan­ning, cus­tomer feed­back and de­ter­mi­na­tion.

We Life: How do you bal­ance your per­son­al life and school with run­ning a grow­ing busi­ness?

SM: I am for­tu­nate to come from a fam­i­ly with a strong en­tre­pre­neur­ial back­ground, and my stud­ies di­rect­ly sup­port my work. I have al­so had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to trav­el to coun­tries and cities in­clud­ing Chi­na, Malaysia, Bor­neo, Sarawak, France, Sin­ga­pore, South Ko­rea and Lon­don. These ex­pe­ri­ences have broad­ened my hori­zons and ex­posed me to dif­fer­ent cul­tures, in­dus­tries, con­sumer be­hav­iours and ap­proach­es to busi­ness. I be­lieve that trav­el­ling and ob­serv­ing how peo­ple think, cre­ate and con­duct busi­ness in­ter­na­tion­al­ly can pro­vide valu­able in­spi­ra­tion for fu­ture ven­tures while keep­ing me ground­ed and mo­ti­vat­ed.

We Life: What ad­vice would you give to oth­er young peo­ple who have a busi­ness idea but are afraid to start?

SM: Do not al­low fear or the pur­suit of per­fec­tion to pre­vent you from start­ing. You do not need to have every­thing fig­ured out from day one. Start with a clear idea, do your re­search, un­der­stand your mar­ket, pre­pare a re­al­is­tic bud­get and sur­round your­self with peo­ple who can of­fer sound guid­ance. Most im­por­tant­ly, be will­ing to lis­ten, learn and adapt.

Not every­one will im­me­di­ate­ly be­lieve in your vi­sion, and that is per­fect­ly fine. Some­times you must demon­strate the po­ten­tial of your idea be­fore oth­ers can see what you see. Every chal­lenge is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op con­fi­dence, re­silience and bet­ter busi­ness judge­ment.

We Life: Do you have any plans to ex­pand - what’s next for you?

SM: Al­though this is cur­rent­ly a sea­son­al ven­ture, I see tremen­dous po­ten­tial for its fu­ture. I al­ready have sev­er­al ideas for 2027, in­clud­ing fur­ther im­prove­ments and in­no­va­tions that will con­tin­ue to dis­tin­guish the prod­uct. I do not be­lieve in be­com­ing com­pla­cent af­ter one suc­cess­ful launch. Every year should present an op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­prove, evolve and of­fer cus­tomers some­thing new.

One of my long-term am­bi­tions is to con­tin­ue that lega­cy as the fourth gen­er­a­tion in­volved in my fam­i­ly’s busi­ness­es - Mo­tor City Lim­it­ed and The Ad­ver­tis­ing and Print­ing Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (APCTT). I recog­nise that car­ry­ing for­ward an es­tab­lished busi­ness comes with tremen­dous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and I want to equip my­self with the ed­u­ca­tion, ex­pe­ri­ence and vi­sion nec­es­sary to con­tribute mean­ing­ful­ly to its con­tin­ued suc­cess. I am ex­cit­ed to see where the next chap­ter leads.