How MGI built a business beyond borders

Fifty years ago, Meghna Group of Industries was a trading business. Today, its factories, products and businesses stretch across much of Bangladesh's industrial landscape — and increasingly beyond it.

The story began in 1976 with Kamal Trading Company. Fourteen years later, the business moved into manufacturing with Meghna Vegetable Oil Industries. What followed was a steady expansion into sectors that now range from consumer goods and chemicals to energy, logistics, healthcare, real estate, shipping, retail and information technology.

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The scale is difficult to miss. MGI now operates more than 57 factories and directly employs over 65,000 people, while more than 100,000 others are estimated to be involved indirectly across its operations. Its products have reached more than 52 countries, including the UK, UAE, France, Bahrain, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Malaysia and India.

But the significance of the journey is not simply in the size of the group. It is in the transition it represents — from a business built around trading and serving a domestic market to one increasingly interested in testing what a Bangladeshi company can build, manufacture and sell abroad.

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Much of that transition can be seen through Fresh.

MGI's rise mirrors the changing ambitions of Bangladesh's private sector, from seving a growing domestic market to competing for consumers beyond the country's borders

For millions of Bangladeshis, Fresh is not an unfamiliar corporate name. Its products appear in kitchens, shops and households across the country, often in categories where consumers make routine purchases without giving much thought to the company behind them.

Infograph: TBS

That familiarity has been built over time.

Fresh's portfolio has expanded across everyday consumer categories, with the underlying proposition centred on making quality products accessible to ordinary households. It is a relatively simple idea, but competing in such categories is rarely simple. Consumers may buy sugar, bottled water or household essentials regularly, but they can also switch brands just as easily.

For a company such as MGI, the challenge is therefore not only to put a product on the shelf, but to make consumers return to it.

This is where the group's domestic experience has become relevant to its international ambitions. A brand that has earned a place in people's routines at home has a starting point from which to explore markets elsewhere. But crossing the border brings a different set of problems.

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What works in Bangladesh may not necessarily work in another country. Consumer habits, price sensitivity, cultural preferences and even expectations around packaging can change from one market to another.

MGI says it therefore looks at local market conditions before entering a new country rather than assuming that an existing product can simply be transplanted into a different market.

That approach is becoming increasingly important as Bangladeshi manufacturers look beyond the country's borders.

The country's export story has historically been dominated by garments. For businesses in other sectors, establishing a presence overseas is a more complicated proposition. They have to compete not just on price, but on quality, consistency, product development and brand recognition.

MGI began exporting in 2000. More than two decades later, exports have become part of a much broader international strategy.

The group has also invested heavily in the industrial infrastructure needed to support its expansion. Its Meghna Economic Zone received Bangladesh's first private economic zone licence, followed by licences for Meghna Industrial Economic Zone and other projects. It has subsequently received pre-qualification for Titas Economic Zone and a licence for Cumilla Industrial Economic Zone.

These investments point to another aspect of MGI's evolution. The company is no longer operating as a collection of individual manufacturing businesses. Its interests now extend across an industrial chain that includes FMCG, pulp and paper, printing and packaging, feeds and seeds, fibre, shipping, aviation, financial institutions, capital markets, hospitality, healthcare, retail and sports.

Such diversification has helped create scale. But scale alone does not necessarily produce globally competitive companies.

That is perhaps where the more difficult part of MGI's story begins.

For all the progress made by Bangladeshi businesses, there are still structural questions around what the country needs to do to produce more companies capable of competing internationally.

MGI identifies innovation as one of the gaps. Bangladesh produces large numbers of graduates, including business graduates, but the group argues that the education system and wider business culture do not yet encourage enough people to pursue innovation, research and entrepreneurship.

Talent presents another challenge. Skilled Bangladeshis continue to seek opportunities abroad, while companies at home often struggle to find professionals with the combination of technical knowledge and practical, industry-specific experience they need.

There is also a larger question of perception. Bangladesh has built a strong manufacturing base, but its international identity is still closely associated with a relatively narrow group of industries. Changing that perception matters if local companies are to attract more foreign investment and establish themselves as global players.

None of these problems can be solved by a company alone.

MGI has argued for stronger policy support for research and innovation, including tax incentives, grants and funding. It has also pointed to the need for measures to retain skilled professionals, create clearer mechanisms for engaging the Bangladeshi diaspora and make education more closely aligned with industry requirements.

These issues matter because the next stage of Bangladesh's industrial development may depend less on producing more and more on what the country is able to create.

There is a difference between manufacturing a product for an overseas buyer and building a brand that consumers abroad recognise and actively choose. The former requires production capacity. The latter requires investment in product development, quality, distribution, marketing and, ultimately, trust.

A handful of Bangladeshi brands have already begun making that transition. MGI sees considerably more room for it to happen.

Its own history illustrates why that possibility is not entirely theoretical. A company that began as Kamal Trading Company in 1976 moved into manufacturing, built consumer brands, expanded into multiple industries and began exporting within a few decades.

The transformation mirrors, in some ways, the changing ambitions of Bangladesh's private sector itself.

For much of the country's industrial history, the central question was how to build enough capacity to meet domestic demand and generate export earnings. The next question is more difficult: can businesses built in Bangladesh create products and brands that can hold their own in markets where consumers have little reason to choose them simply because they come from here?

MGI's five decades provide one answer to the first question. Its expanding international footprint suggests that it is now attempting to address the second.

The measure of the next 50 years may therefore not be the number of factories built or businesses added to an already sprawling portfolio. It may be how many brands created in Bangladesh manage to travel well beyond its borders.

That is a much bigger test — for MGI, and for the country's industrial ambitions as a whole.