Dhashma Karunaratne is the Commercial and Marketing Manager at South Asia Gateway (SAGT).
She contributes to the overarching Commercial and Marketing strategy and is accountable for tactical execution to achieve its strategic objectives.
A Fellow member of CIMA (UK) she commenced her career at Mercantile Investments in 1999 and moved to Fentons as the Company’s Management Accountant. In 2005 she joined the Corporate Finance and Group Strategy Division of premier conglomerate John Keells Holdings and moved to MNC Reckitt Benckiser as The Commercial Controller in 2007.
Dhashma joined Team SAGT in 2009 as Manager - Management Accounting. When the vacancy for her current role arose in 2014, she grabbed the opportunity to broaden her professional scope.
She recalls the early days as being exciting and challenging. “I came into the position at a time of increased competition in the port of Colombo. Our customers - the liner container industry, was experiencing unprecedented financial challenges” she said. “Additionally, there were other ‘man made’ challenges imposed on our operating environment, as the port was not being positioned as one entity but rather divisively very inward looking” she said.
Continuing on she said, “However, working alongside the newly appointed Ted Muttiah as Chief Commercial Officer was inspiring, confronting, motivating and at times overwhelming. Ted needs no introduction of course; he brought international best practice, is highly driven and a master business strategist. He set high standards, led by example and challenged us to move out of our comfort zone and actualize our true potential. He was relentless in positioning SAGT as a customer focused high-performance organization. His imminent departure to a new assignment overseas, in my opinion, is a tremendous loss to Sri Lanka’s maritime industry” she says reflectively.
Adding “SAGT is privileged to have many highly capable women from the outset of the terminal’s concession. However, we need to gain the advantage of greater gender diversity across all levels of our business and this is very much one of the priorities under new CEO Romesh David”
Dhashma is the current elected Chairperson of the Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport’s arm of Women in Logistics and Transport. A role she took over from the ubiquitous Women in Logistics dynamo Gayani De Alwis.
These two partnership programs conceptualized and executed by Dhashma were commended by Women In Logistics and Transport International. Dhashma was recognized for her visionary leadership extended to WiLAT Sri Lanka, at the recently held CILT conference in Macau, Hong Kong.
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