In 1989, Anand Ram­nar­ine Singh opened a con­ve­nience store in Fyz­abad.

Just about sev­en years lat­er, in 1996 he opened his first Anand Low Price Su­per­mar­ket.

On Fri­day, he opened his sixth branch of Anand Low Price Su­per­mar­ket at South Park Mall in San Fer­nan­do.

The sto­ry of start­ing small and ex­pand­ing to a large en­ter­prise is a tale as old as time, but the con­tin­ued ex­pan­sion of the group in spite of the var­i­ous chal­lenges fac­ing the econ­o­my un­der­lines the com­pa­ny’s keen recog­ni­tion and abil­i­ty to adapt said his daugh­ter Chelsea Ram­nar­ine Singh.

“I think, al­though the econ­o­my feels like it’s shrink­ing right now and a lot of peo­ple are opt­ing to sell their busi­ness, there is still room for growth. And luck­i­ly one of the di­rec­tors, al­so the founder of the com­pa­ny Mr Anand, he has an eye for these op­por­tu­ni­ties and he saw that there was space in South Park to have a su­per­mar­ket and felt as though it was miss­ing one,” said Chelsea, one of ALPG’s di­rec­tors.

In a phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian Chelsea said ALPG last opened a branch in 2019, at Trop­i­cal Plaza, Mara­bel­la but up­on see­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty avail­able at the pop­u­lar shop­ping mall, the group moved in.

“So he want­ed to ba­si­cal­ly open a su­per­mar­ket here and serve those in the area, St Joseph, Mara­bel­la, Tarou­ba. So he saw it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty,” she said, adding that while it was not the largest Su­per­mar­ket in terms of size, at on­ly 6000 square feet, it was well stocked and would cater for those pass­ing through the mall.

“He main­ly tries to serve the com­mu­ni­ty and seek af­ter their needs, so in a huge mall like South Park and their wasn’t any su­per­mar­ket and he felt like it need­ed one” adding that the 9pm clos­ing time al­so cre­at­ed a wider avail­abil­i­ty for cus­tomers.

This aware­ness has been key to its suc­cess, as the group recog­nised that oth­er su­per­mar­kets were al­so try­ing to cap­i­talise dur­ing last year’s re­stric­tions, lead­ing to its ad­just­ment in strat­e­gy, with spe­cial of­fers need­ed to en­sure cus­tomers were al­ways will­ing to try Anand Low Price.

“I think we have been a lot more com­pet­i­tive with our pric­ing, be­cause there was a lot of com­pe­ti­tion and a lot of gro­ceries were do­ing stronger ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paigns,” Ram­nar­ine Singh said.

This she ex­plained di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion has been the main strat­e­gy of the group, recog­nis­ing a need or a va­can­cy and pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary fix or fill.

This ap­proached served the com­pa­ny well dur­ing the past year as while many busi­ness­es saw mas­sive loss­es due to the re­stric­tions im­posed to com­bat the spread of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, they sought out op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The bor­der clo­sure brought an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty as they catered to those who would have pre­vi­ous­ly trav­elled to do their shop­ping.

“Dur­ing this pan­dem­ic we opened a lot of busi­ness­es be­cause we saw that there were a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. For in­stance we opened Amer­i­can Ex­po be­cause the bor­ders were closed and peo­ple weren’t al­lowed to get out of the coun­try and shop so we im­port­ed clothes from Amer­i­ca. We opened three branch­es of Amer­i­can Ex­po be­fore we re-brand­ed to 100 Be­low,” said Ram­nar­ine Singh.

The group has al­so man­aged to re­main com­pet­i­tive in spite of the chal­lenges with re­gard to avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change, by main­tain­ing main­ly lo­cals sup­pli­ers for the su­per­mar­ket chain.

“Luck­i­ly a lot of our sup­pli­ers are lo­cal and they have been pro­vid­ing us with stuff on a reg­u­lar ba­sis, we haven’t re­al­ly been neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by the for­eign ex­change short­age that much,” she said.

The group’s growth has been re­flect­ed in con­fi­dence shown by banks and in­vestors.

“But through our sup­pli­ers and al­so the banks have helped a lot, par­tic­u­lar­ly FCB was help­ing us gain the fi­nances we need­ed and we have a lot of con­fi­dence in the Anand Low Price group,” Ram­nar­ine Singh said.

Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion has long been a part of the com­pa­ny’s busi­ness mod­el as they cur­rent­ly have four­teen sub­sidiaries, span­ning five in­dus­tries: re­tail, food & drink, fit­ness, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, and re­al es­tate.

The com­pa­ny’s web­site states “Our con­tin­ued longevi­ty in the busi­ness field across a broad se­lec­tion of mar­kets is made pos­si­ble by our abil­i­ty to quick­ly adapt to the con­tin­u­al­ly chang­ing needs and wants of our di­verse clien­tèle.”

Their about us sec­tion states, “Achieve­ment did not come about with hard work but by work­ing smart.”

This was epit­o­mised by an­oth­er re­al­i­sa­tion the com­pa­ny had in 2020 when the cre­at­ed the fast food restau­rant Nick’s Bakes at South Haven, Debe as an al­ter­na­tive for those who could not buy gro­ceries and cook dai­ly.

“We felt like peo­ple didn’t have that much dis­pos­able in­come to spend on gro­ceries every­day to cook food and ba­si­cal­ly want­ed some­thing quick and cheap,” she said adding that the group con­tin­ued to look for op­por­tu­ni­ties de­spite the un­favourable con­di­tions.

“We tried to see what we can do to make mon­ey dur­ing this in­stead of sit and do noth­ing,” said Ram­nar­ine Singh.

This di­ver­si­ty has proved im­per­a­tive to the com­pa­ny’s suc­cess as while a com­pet­i­tive pric­ing strat­e­gy kept the Su­per­mar­ket chain thriv­ing and Amer­i­can Ex­po turned prof­its, sev­er­al of their busi­ness­es were se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the re­stric­tions.

The group owns the pop­u­lar Rig Restau­rant and well as the Run­way Ho­tel and Restau­rant and oth­er restau­rants whose in­dus­try was es­sen­tial­ly closed for vast ma­jor­i­ty of 2020. The group al­so owns Health and Fit­ness which al­so saw sev­er­al months with­out op­er­a­tions, mean­ing the su­per­mar­ket’s suc­cess es­sen­tial kept the lights on for these op­er­a­tions. Even with a re­lax­ation of re­stric­tions for these op­er­a­tions, most of them are still on­ly break­ing even in terms of its op­er­a­tions the Busi­ness Guardian was told.

Chelsea Ram­nar­ine Singh told the Busi­ness Guardian that the group hopes that there will be some more ad­just­ments so op­er­a­tions at these fran­chis­es can ex­pe­ri­ence in­creased busi­ness, as she joined the cho­rus of own­ers hop­ing for the op­er­at­ing hours for restau­rants to be pushed back to mid­night.