68 October 2016 - 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.”
