The in­den­tured labour­ers who ar­rived on the Fa­tel Raza­ck on May 30, 1845 not on­ly brought to T&T a wide range of their unique cul­tures and fes­ti­vals, but those who chose to stay, have sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tributed to the over­all eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of this coun­try.

As the coun­try marks In­di­an Ar­rival Day to­day, nu­mer­ous busi­ness­es owned by East In­di­an de­scen­dants can be found through­out T&T, a tes­ti­mo­ny of their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion in striv­ing for a bet­ter life for them­selves and their chil­dren.

Kam­ri In­vest­ments Ltd, trad­ing un­der the name Kam­ri Glass, is one such en­ti­ty which was built from the ground up and is now a force to be reck­oned with.

With over 30 em­ploy­ees, con­tract­ed and non-con­tract­ed, it is a fam­i­ly-owned and man­aged com­pa­ny in op­er­a­tion for over 20 years. It is in­volved in the mass pro­duc­tion of tem­pered glass and win­dows for pri­vate/res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial mar­kets.

Kam­ri Glass pro­duces a range of prod­ucts in­clud­ing glass par­ti­tions, rail­ings, cup­board doors, bi-fold doors, pa­tio doors, bath en­clo­sures and oth­er glass ar­chi­tec­tur­al prod­ucts.

What be­gan with US$100 has now turned in­to a thriv­ing en­ti­ty, found­ed by Kameel Khan 47, and his wife Rizwana 44, with the name of the busi­ness re­flect­ing a mar­riage of their two names.

“We start­ed work­ing and we nev­er stopped” Khan said, not­ing that his wife is the CFO.

Khan, the com­pa­ny’s CEO, spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian about his jour­ney which he de­scribed as “noth­ing oth­er than great.”

“What we en­vi­sioned turned out to be big­ger and more fruit­ful every step of the way. We were favoured in the mod­ern think­ing and well treat­ed in the mar­ket we were in be­cause a lot of peo­ple need­ed that first-world and mod­ern think­ing in touch with ser­vice and prod­ucts...in the busi­ness of glass and win­dows every one was do­ing one type of win­dow since 40 years ago. We start­ed sell­ing that and then we re­alised peo­ple trav­elled and they liked the frame­less show­ers, they liked the big­ger and heav­ier framed prod­ucts and the fan­cy han­dles and the on­ly way to do that was to be able to make the glass,” Khan ex­plained.

He said the com­pa­ny tried im­port­ing the glass, but this turned out to be too cost­ly.

The com­pa­ny then de­cid­ed to make the tem­pered glass lo­cal­ly and the rest is his­to­ry.

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, the busi­ness didn’t start with glass.

It be­gan with dis­trib­ut­ing stretch wrap, used for seal­ing pack­ages, pal­lets and, in some cas­es, in plumb­ing.

“It was over the next few years when the com­pa­ny be­gan look­ing for prod­ucts to spe­cialise in, and try­ing many prod­ucts. We moved from bring­ing in alu­mini­um sheets for signs, to buy­ing and re­selling glass from lo­cal com­pa­nies and dis­trib­ut­ing glass as well,” it stat­ed.

Be­ing new to the dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness, lessons were learnt, start­ing at the ba­sic lev­el of how to cut glass.

Then it be­gan sup­ply­ing the glass for hous­ing de­vel­op­ments and al­so in­vest­ed in tech­nol­o­gy and ma­chin­ery.

This set the foun­da­tion for the fu­ture growth that would come.

Kam­ri In­vest­ments Ltd has since sig­nif­i­cant­ly grown from a dis­trib­u­tor of var­i­ous prod­ucts to a glass dis­trib­u­tor to an im­porter, and ex­pand­ed by in­vest­ing in mod­ern glass tem­per­ing equip­ment, and de­vel­op­ing T&T’s first glass-cut­ting pro­cess­ing line.

Glass tem­per­ing is a process where stock glass is heat­ed to a cer­tain tem­per­a­ture, then cooled, mak­ing it stronger and less like­ly to cut some­one if it breaks.

The strength of the glass and its safe­ty fea­tures make it per­fect for mod­ern ar­chi­tec­ture.

Just be­fore the heights of COVID-19, Kam­ri Glass start­ed ex­port­ing.

Due to the shut­down and loss of for­eign ex­change, that slowed down sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

How­ev­er, with per­sis­tence, cer­tain con­tacts in var­i­ous coun­tries were es­tab­lished and once the mar­kets re­opened, there was di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the prospects in the is­lands.

Kam­ri Glass now ex­ports to Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and Guyana with sights sets on Brazil and Suri­name next year.

In 2023, 30 per cent of the com­pa­ny’s sales was in ex­port.

Kam­ri In­vest­ments Ltd was award­ed Most Suc­cess­ful Mar­ket En­trant of 2017 by the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and was al­so proud to be the re­cip­i­ent of Break­through Ex­porter of the Year Award 2022 from the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.

The Break­through Ex­porter of the Year cat­e­go­ry is open to small­er com­pa­nies (not in­di­vid­u­als or pro­fes­sion­als in busi­ness) which have branched out in­to ex­port mar­kets and have been able to show sig­nif­i­cant growth.

Go­ing for­ward, Khan said he con­tin­ues to strive to “change and mod­i­fy the game.”

“We have enough in terms of equip­ment. We start­ed to move to­wards so­lar and we are hop­ing by the end of this year we will open that fac­to­ry to man­u­fac­ture so­lar pan­els in Trinidad,” the fa­ther of three said.

The busi­ness has two fac­to­ries in Point Lisas, two in Mara­bel­la and a re­cent­ly ac­quired prop­er­ty in Point Lisas for the so­lar fac­to­ry.

With the ex­pect­ed so­lar fac­to­ry, Khan hopes this will pave the way for fur­ther ex­pan­sion in­to the re­gion­al mar­kets.

“Peo­ple al­ways un­der­es­ti­mate the pri­vate sec­tor and that’s my vi­sion and mis­sion. To pro­duce, to break the bar­ri­ers of the bound­aries set by norms and ex­pec­ta­tions,” Khan added.

He is al­so ex­cit­ed about his chil­dren tak­ing over the busi­ness one day.

“If they choose to come in we have it set up that’s why we are look­ing at fu­ture with re­new­able en­er­gy,” Khan added.

Khan is al­so heart­ened that as an East In­di­an he con­tin­ues to make his own con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T.

“The big­ger pic­ture is the coun­try. We have staff who have been with us for over 10 years and we are see­ing their kids grow. We know every­body. It’s like the whole fam­i­ly has been ex­tend­ed.

“All our staff are part of the fam­i­ly and we try to help the greater com­mu­ni­ty in every way we can,” Khan shared, as he em­pha­sised that it’s not al­ways about busi­ness or mon­ey, but rather who or what one can do to help.

For in­stance, Khan cit­ed an ini­tia­tive he is in­volved in, which is build­ing hous­es for the less for­tunte, a form of za­cat.

“One per­son had once said ‘any cheap win­dow.’ I said if the per­son is poor why give them some­thing cheap where in five years they have to find mon­ey again. Give them a 20-year or a 15-year prod­uct so their kids can reap the re­wards,” Khan said.

Khan’s acute busi­ness acu­men is al­so in his blood as his fa­ther and grand­fa­ther were al­so own­ers of busi­ness­es in­clud­ing gro­ceries.

So what made Khan go in­to the glass busi­ness?

“High cap­i­tal catch­es me. Big in­vest­ments, big re­turns,” he ex­plained.

Im­part­ing words of wis­dom, Khan ex­pressed, “As East In­di­ans we live in a world where every­one felt we came from noth­ing, so we were al­ready passed the worst. If we sit and do noth­ing then we re­main nowhere. We need to keep push­ing. Don’t stop, don’t pro­cras­ti­nate. Keep go­ing.

“If the prob­lem is mon­ey, mon­ey will al­ways be a prob­lem. You need to fig­ure out how to turn things around with your busi­ness or cred­it rat­ings.”