An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For Eye See You Oph­thalmics, sur­viv­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was on­ly the be­gin­ning.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go-based sup­pli­er of oph­thalmic and op­ti­cal prod­ucts has since trans­formed the vis­i­bil­i­ty it gained as an es­sen­tial ser­vice in­to a grow­ing re­gion­al ex­port busi­ness, even as per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­ages, sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions and bank­ing con­straints con­tin­ue to test its ex­pan­sion plans.

The com­pa­ny, which sup­plies oph­thal­mol­o­gists, op­tometrists, op­ti­cal re­tail­ers, phar­ma­cies, and hos­pi­tals, has steadi­ly in­creased its foot­print across the Caribbean since the pan­dem­ic. To­day, it ex­ports to more than 13 ter­ri­to­ries, a strat­e­gy that own­er Sunil Moonasar says be­came nec­es­sary as busi­ness­es sought new growth op­por­tu­ni­ties amid T&T’s pro­longed for­eign ex­change short­age.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Moonasar said the pan­dem­ic fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the com­pa­ny’s tra­jec­to­ry. Re­main­ing op­er­a­tional dur­ing one of the most dis­rup­tive pe­ri­ods in glob­al trade gave the busi­ness greater ex­po­sure among health­care providers and forced it to re­think every­thing from in­ven­to­ry man­age­ment to re­gion­al ex­pan­sion.

“Dur­ing COVID-19, we were one of the es­sen­tial com­pa­nies that still had to con­tin­ue our op­er­a­tions be­cause of the prod­ucts that we sup­ply to phar­ma­cies. Peo­ple still need­ed their med­ica­tions and oph­thalmic prod­ucts,” he said.

Re­main­ing open, how­ev­er, came with sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges. Glob­al sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions, freight bot­tle­necks and short­ages of com­mer­cial ship­ping ca­pac­i­ty de­layed de­liv­er­ies and re­duced the avail­abil­i­ty of prod­ucts on which health­care providers de­pend­ed.

Rather than al­low­ing in­ven­to­ries to run down, the com­pa­ny al­tered its fi­nan­cial strat­e­gy by rein­vest­ing earn­ings in­to larg­er stock hold­ings. Moonasar said that the de­ci­sion has be­come one of the com­pa­ny’s great­est com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages.

“We rein­vest­ed our div­i­dends in­to in­ven­to­ry. That helped us to al­ways have stock avail­able and to make sure cus­tomers could con­tin­ue re­ceiv­ing the prod­ucts they need­ed,” he ex­plained.

The strat­e­gy al­so re­duced the com­pa­ny’s ex­po­sure to con­tin­u­ing dis­rup­tions in in­ter­na­tion­al lo­gis­tics af­ter bor­ders re­opened. Al­though sup­ply chains have im­proved com­pared with the height of the pan­dem­ic, avail­abil­i­ty re­mains in­con­sis­tent for sev­er­al spe­cialised med­ical prod­ucts.

Eye See You Oph­thalmics is lo­cat­ed in eTecK’s Bil­jah Busi­ness Park, Ch­agua­nas.

Look­ing be­yond T&T

De­spite in­creas­ing its re­gion­al foot­print, T&T re­mains the foun­da­tion of the busi­ness, ac­count­ing for rough­ly 90 per cent of its op­er­a­tions.

Moonasar said con­fi­dence in in­vest­ing lo­cal­ly re­mains high be­cause de­mand for oph­thal­mol­o­gy prod­ucts con­tin­ues to ex­pand as doc­tors mod­ernise their prac­tices and pa­tients seek more ad­vanced eye care.

“Our niche mar­ket con­tin­ues to grow, and we con­tin­ue to in­vest,” he said. “We al­so con­tin­ue en­cour­ag­ing doc­tors to up­grade their equip­ment be­cause tech­nol­o­gy has changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly since the pan­dem­ic.”

He not­ed that short­ages of semi­con­duc­tor chips dis­rupt­ed med­ical equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing world­wide, leav­ing many old­er ma­chines ob­so­lete or un­sup­port­ed.

In­stead of view­ing those de­vel­op­ments as set­backs, Eye See You Oph­thalmics worked close­ly with oph­thal­mol­o­gists and health­care providers to fa­cil­i­tate equip­ment up­grades, en­sur­ing prac­tices re­mained cur­rent with evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

Moonasar be­lieves that in­vest­ment in mod­ern di­ag­nos­tic and treat­ment equip­ment is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant as health­care providers seek greater ef­fi­cien­cy and im­proved pa­tient out­comes.

Even with those pos­i­tive trends, he ac­knowl­edged that for­eign ex­change re­mains the sin­gle largest ob­sta­cle fac­ing the busi­ness.

“The for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion is a damper for many com­pa­nies,” he re­marked. “As an es­sen­tial provider of oph­thalmic prod­ucts, there can come a point where not get­ting for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tions be­comes very dan­ger­ous.”

He said both com­mer­cial banks and of­fi­cial fi­nanc­ing chan­nels play an im­por­tant role in en­sur­ing im­porters of es­sen­tial med­ical prod­ucts can con­tin­ue sup­ply­ing the lo­cal health­care sys­tem.

That chal­lenge has al­so ac­cel­er­at­ed the com­pa­ny’s push in­to ex­port mar­kets.

Eye See You Oph­thalmics now sup­plies cus­tomers in more than 13 Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries, serv­ing both Eng­lish-speak­ing and Dutch-speak­ing is­lands. Among its prin­ci­pal ex­port des­ti­na­tions are the Cay­man Is­lands, Bermu­da, The Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Cu­raçao, and Ja­maica.

Moonasar de­scribed re­gion­al ex­pan­sion as one of the com­pa­ny’s strongest growth dri­vers over the past sev­er­al years.

“It has been grow­ing very rapid­ly be­cause we op­er­ate in a spe­cialised niche mar­ket,” he said.

Ja­maica, he added, rep­re­sents the com­pa­ny’s most chal­leng­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty be­cause of the size and com­pet­i­tive­ness of that mar­ket. Nev­er­the­less, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues in­vest­ing in de­vel­op­ing re­la­tion­ships there through its ded­i­cat­ed ex­port di­vi­sion.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives trav­el fre­quent­ly through­out the Caribbean to sup­port cus­tomers, in­stall equip­ment, and strength­en com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships.

Bank­ing hur­dles

While ex­ports of­fer new rev­enue op­por­tu­ni­ties, Moonasar be­lieves this coun­try’s fi­nan­cial sys­tem has not ful­ly adapt­ed to busi­ness­es ac­tive­ly earn­ing for­eign ex­change. One is­sue he high­light­ed is ac­cess to busi­ness cred­it cards for trav­el­ling staff.

He said re­duced for­eign cur­ren­cy al­lo­ca­tions and low spend­ing lim­its have made rou­tine busi­ness trav­el in­creas­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed.
“There are times when our trav­el­ling of­fi­cers can­not get enough cred­it card lim­its to per­form their du­ties over­seas,” he said.

In some in­stances, em­ploy­ees are forced to car­ry cash be­cause busi­ness cred­it fa­cil­i­ties are un­avail­able or in­suf­fi­cient. That cre­ates ad­di­tion­al com­pli­ca­tions since many over­seas ser­vice providers, in­clud­ing ve­hi­cle rental com­pa­nies, re­quire cred­it card pay­ments.

“There are oc­ca­sions when our staff have to use their per­son­al cred­it cards for com­pa­ny ex­pens­es be­cause there re­al­ly isn’t an­oth­er op­tion,” Moonasar said, adding that busi­ness­es should not be placed in that po­si­tion.

He ar­gued that banks should dis­tin­guish be­tween com­pa­nies gen­er­at­ing ex­port earn­ings and cus­tomers seek­ing for­eign cur­ren­cy for per­son­al con­sump­tion.

“If a busi­ness is bring­ing for­eign ex­change back in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go, then the tools have to be pro­vid­ed for that busi­ness to op­er­ate ef­fi­cient­ly,” he said. Those tools, he sug­gest­ed, in­clude high­er cred­it card lim­its for trav­el­ling staff and bank­ing poli­cies de­signed specif­i­cal­ly for ex­porters rather than stan­dard­ised rules ap­plied across every cus­tomer cat­e­go­ry.

Moonasar be­lieves a more flex­i­ble ap­proach would ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit both fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and the wider econ­o­my by sup­port­ing com­pa­nies ca­pa­ble of earn­ing ad­di­tion­al ex­port rev­enue.

Al­though these op­er­a­tional chal­lenges per­sist, they have not di­min­ished his con­fi­dence in T&T as a place to build a busi­ness.
“I would al­ways en­cour­age peo­ple to in­vest in Trinidad,” he said. “There are al­ways highs and lows in every econ­o­my, but there is tremen­dous po­ten­tial here, es­pe­cial­ly for small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es.”

Fur­ther ex­pan­sion re­mains part of the com­pa­ny’s long-term strat­e­gy, with staffing ex­pect­ed to grow from its cur­rent com­ple­ment of 32 em­ploy­ees to about 50 by the end of 2027 if re­gion­al growth con­tin­ues at its present pace.

Fif­teen years of growth

As Eye See You Oph­thalmics marks its 15th year in busi­ness, Moonasar views the mile­stone less as an end­point than as ev­i­dence of grad­ual, dis­ci­plined growth built on long-term re­la­tion­ships.

He de­scribed the jour­ney as both re­ward­ing and de­mand­ing, not­ing that trust earned from cus­tomers, oph­thal­mol­o­gists, phar­ma­cists, and op­ti­cal re­tail­ers has been cen­tral to the com­pa­ny’s de­vel­op­ment. .

Moonasar re­flect­ed that pa­tience has been one of the most valu­able lessons he has learned.

“It has been chal­leng­ing and re­ward­ing,” he said. “Cus­tomers got to know us, trust us, and grow along­side us. We have learned that pa­tience is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant not on­ly for your staff, but al­so in deal­ing with cus­tomers, doc­tors, and op­ti­cal stores.”

Look­ing ahead, he ex­pects in­no­va­tion, re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in spe­cialised health­care prod­ucts to shape the com­pa­ny’s next phase of growth. Yet he be­lieves that un­lock­ing the full po­ten­tial of ex­port-ori­ent­ed busi­ness­es will re­quire im­prove­ments to the for­eign ex­change en­vi­ron­ment and bank­ing poli­cies that bet­ter re­flect the re­al­i­ties fac­ing com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing be­yond Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bor­ders.

Moonasar be­lieves the next phase of the com­pa­ny’s growth will be dri­ven by ad­vances in dig­i­tal health­care, par­tic­u­lar­ly ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, which is al­ready re­shap­ing the oph­thal­mol­o­gy in­dus­try.

Speak­ing about the com­pa­ny’s fu­ture di­rec­tion, he said AI has moved well be­yond be­ing a con­sumer tool and is in­creas­ing­ly be­ing in­te­grat­ed in­to clin­i­cal di­ag­no­sis, imag­ing and pa­tient man­age­ment.
“We are mov­ing in­to a new era of tech­nol­o­gy. AI is al­ready here in health­care and in eye­care, and it is not Chat­G­PT,” Moonasar said.
He added that Eye See You Oph­thalmics in­tends to re­main at the fore­front of those de­vel­op­ments as it ex­pands its re­gion­al pres­ence.