Indian-born businessman Suvra Chakraborty talks about his Ukrainian business development and his support of culture and artists
Charming Suvra Chakraborty, who greets me at the bar of the Radisson Hotel, looks every part the dapper Indian gentleman as well as the modern European man. No wonder – having lived in Ukraine for the last 12 years, and constantly traveling around the globe, he has become a citizen of the world, though he still spends most of his time and conducts his business in his second home, Ukraine. Chakraborty, presently the director of AMC Overseas LTD company, admits that when he first came here there were difficulties, but he didn’t tend to notice them.
“I was focused on my goal and too busy to pay attention to it. Besides, negatives have no end, so I always look for the positive in everything.”
Business ambassador of Ukraine
Born in Calcutta, the then 28-year-old computer specialist came to Ukraine in 1994 as a representative of a Singapore-based international trading company.
“I was open to the world and open to working in an unknown country. I studied Russian at the university and the company appointed me to be their representative in Kyiv. My task was to help put computers on Russian tables, as there were hardly any PCs in the former Soviet Union at the time,” Chakraborty said.
However, when the young Indian came to Kyiv, he found that not only PCs, but many other things were missing there, and he thus saw many business opportunities for himself.
“I found out that Ukraine was producing five million tons of sugar and not making a single sack to pack it in. Instead, it was using jute bags produced in my home town of Calcutta,” Chakraborty said.
Enterprising Chakraborty came up with an idea to start producing sacks in Ukraine and before long the factory in the Ternopil region was founded, producing Ukraine’s own propylene bags. From that moment on Chakraborty left his company and became an independent businessman.
“I discovered that people in Ukraine were open and easy to communicate with. Of course, vodka helped to open up the barriers,” he recalled with a smile.
Seeing the true potential of Ukrainian industry, Chakraborty founded his own company and, instead of importing to Ukraine like many others did, he started exporting from the country. However, the main problem he was confronted with was that nobody considered Ukraine a serious business partner.
“So I became an «ambassador» of Ukraine. I pursued customers in Japan, China, Poland, all the wayup to Brazil and Mexico, and persuaded them that Ukraine could produce quality products according to the business practices of the world,” Chakraborty said.
Family philosophy
Working and living in Ukraine most of the time, Chakraborty gave his parentsthe task of finding a wife for him, acommon practice in India.
“When people get married, it’s not only a union between two people, it’s a union between families. The young are often carried away by emotions and don’t consider such things as social and material status, and it may cause problems in the future. So my family was looking for a family where there was a girl that could be a match for me. And they found such a girl. The moment I saw her I knew I had been looking for her my whole life. I didn’t give her any chance to think twice,” Chakraborty recalled with a smile.
In the end of 1995 he brought his wife to Ukraine.
“I told her that she had to come with an open mind, as Ukraine differed from India in almost everything. And at the time she didn’t even know such a country existed,” Chakraborty said.
When she came, Chakraborty first of all found a teacher to teach her Russian and hired a couple of Ukrainian ladies to help her with household work, which also helped her to pick up the language.
“Still speaking very little Russian, she started taking driving classes. But she was so serious about it that she learned the language just to be able to read those books on driving, and passed the driving test after one attempt, which not everybody manages to do,” Chakraborty said with pride.
Soon after that Chakraborty became the father of two sons – presently seven and nine years old. Studying in the regular Ukrainian school, the children go to their parents’ homeland for holidays every year, and are fluent in Ukrainian and Russian, as well as two Indian languages and English.
“I take my children many places and this year we’ll go to Arab countries so that they can see that what we see in the media is not always true, and in the Muslim world there are a lot of good people. Then when they grow up and speak many languages, they can find there own ways,” Chakraborty said
A patron of culture
“It was my brainchild to create an Indian community club,” Chakraborty said. “I realized that India is known to the older generation here mostly due to Indian films and positive Soviet propaganda, but since the Soviet Union fell down, there was no new information coming about India,” Chakraborty added.
Presently the club holds regular meetings once or twice every month and for several years now it has been holding public festivals in honor of Indian Independence Day celebrated on August 15.
“We held open-air concerts on Khreschatyk, Podil and last year at the Spivoche pole,” Chakraborty said. “About 20,000 people in Kyiv attended those concerts – it was the largest celebration of Indian independence outside of India and the biggest achievement of our club. I’m very proud of it,” Chakraborty added.
The other great interest of Chakraborty’s is classical music, or, to be more precise, Ukrainian conductor Herman Makarenko, whose craft once mesmerized Chakraborty.
“When I saw his talents, I was spellbound. I asked him what we could do so that the whole world would know about him. He told me that I was the second person in the world to tell him that, the first one being his father,” Chakraborty recalled.
That’s when the cooperation between an Indian businessman and a Ukrainian conductor began.
“I started supporting him as much as I could. Now we have a London-based company, “Kiev Classic,” created specifically for the needs of Makarenko’s business,” Chakraborty said.
During the days of the Orange Revolution Makarenko had his first solo concert playing the music of Strauss at the Opera House. The next concert, dedicated to women and aptly called “Declaration of Love,” took place on the 8th of March and soon after that Makarenko gave concerts in France and Belgium. “Right now Herman is in Macedonia and in July we’re going to give concerts in Italy and Netherlands. If we do this right, Herman Makarenko will become a household name. And they’ll get to know Ukraine more through him,” Chakraborty said.
