Divico Distributors

2 Business View Caribbean Divico Distributors 25 years on St. Maarten Sunny Khatnani, the Managing Director of Divico Dis- tributors only came to the business in 2006, when his uncle, Danny Ramchandani, alerted him to the fact that the company might be for sale. “The owner was a Nestlé executive handling brands all over the Carib- bean, and Central and South America,” says Khatnani. “When he retired from Nestlé, he decided to open on the island of St. Maarten. He started with one or two brands, and then he built the company up from there.” In order to decide what the business would be like, Khatnani offered to work for free for three months. “I realized that I was enjoying what I was doing – orga- nizing the company and making it better.” Within a few weeks, he was sold. Today, Divico Distributors, which was originally founded in 1991, is one of the largest distribution companies on St. Maarten, and celebrating its 25th anniversary. “Back then, we were really a smaller player,” Khatnani says. “We’ve tripled in sales and we’ve tripled in size. We started off with 17 employees and today we have 60. We are distributing for 30 additional companies, so we represent about 45 companies, now. We were only primarily focused on retail distribution, and now we’re also doing food service distribution, as well. So, we’ve come a long way.”