BrazilBCG's Sanjaya Mohottala takes up investment board post in Sri Lanka
Former BCG managing director Sanjaya Mohottala has taken up a director general post with the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka.
Sanjaya Mohottala, previously a core member of the Southeast Asia corporate development and principal investors & private equity practices of global consultancy Boston Consulting Group – has taken up his post as the new Director General of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka. Ultimately rising to partner, Mohottala spent more than twelve years with BCG after his first taste during a summer placement.
A MBA graduate of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management – with Entrepreneurship and Strategy the focus areas – Mohottala spent three months as a summer consultant with BCG during 2006, before joining the management consulting giant in a full-time capacity the following year. Earlier, he had spent close to three years as a brand manager for Unilever, having originally graduated with a BSc.
During his career with BCG, Mohottala steadily ascended the ranks, first as a project manager and then as a principal just four years after joining. At the start of 2015, he was made partner and managing director, assuming responsibility for the firm’s shipping, transportation, and logistics sector business across the Asia Pacific in addition to his leadership role in the corporate development/ private equity practices.
Mohottala according to his BCG bio has gained extensive experience in strategy, advance analytics, operational improvement, sales and marketing, and organisation design, having worked on “large-scale transformations and been instrumental in developing advanced analytical tools for several global container shipping companies.” Go-to-market in developing countries is also a listed area of expertise.
According to local reports, the new director general on his first day at the helm addressed senior staff on his vision for the Board of Investment (BOI) and how to enhance Sri Lanka’s attractiveness for foreign investment, as well as of the need to grow the country’s ICT and knowledge economy sectors. In terms of the BOI itself, embracing digital technology was among the key points.
As might be expected from his time at BCG, the use of digital transformation as a tool to improve service and attract business is familiar territory for Mohottala. “To be frank, I see no real option but to embrace digital fully,” he stated in respect to shipping companies last year. “Unless you have certain investments in digital, in fact, you can’t even begin to improve your services in a cost-effective way.”
As for the need to grow the local knowledge economy, this sentiment also in manner reflects Mohottala’s experiences at BCG, where he spent his time based out of Singapore. Among the so-called MBB of world-leading strategy and management consultancies (further including Bain & Company and BCG), McKinsey & Company is the only one to date to have established a permanent office in Sri Lanka.
