The journey of the Multi Group of Companies to become what it is today is indeed contiguous with the story of its founder and CEO, Mr. Jagnanan Sookoo. Through his humility, spirituality and ambition to become a successful businessman and create a better life for himself and his family, Mr. Sookoo was able to build an organization spanning six companies in various industries.

• Multi Food Processors Ltd
• Multi Marketing Agency Ltd
• Jaipur Trading Ltd
• Shivnarisa Import & Export
• Shirina Enterprises Ltd
• Shivron International Food Consolidators Ltd

Early Life

Jagnanan Sookoo grew up in Sangre Grande with a large family, being the seventh of fourteen children. Coming from such a large family, it was often hard for him and his parents to afford the things he wanted as a young man. Nevertheless, this undoubtedly fuelled his desire to become a self-made businessman. In 1972, at the age of twenty, Sookoo began his first enterprise, selling fruits from his father’s small citrus estate at the Tunapuna Market with his two schoolmates. Operating this small business of selling fruits at the market afforded Sookoo the opportunity to share his earnings with his mother and further his education in accounting at St. Andrew’s College. During this period, Sookoo was also involved in a number of business endeavours from buying and selling vehicles to teaching, succeeding at each venture. 

He eventually left his teaching position to work as an account at an estate owned by H. E. Robinson & Company. Inspired by the achievements of this company, it was here that he definitively confirmed his desire to become a businessman. After two years of working as an account, Sookoo decided to switch jobs upon seeing an ad for a chauffeur for a prominent businessman at Thomas & Sons Ltd in Port of Spain. Despite the new job offering a pay increase, Sookoo’s father was so disappointed in his decision to leave his respectable job as an accountant that he put him out of their home. While at the time this was a very disheartening circumstance, he recognized it as an opportunity to learn how to take care of himself and manage a household on his own.

Sookoo’s career flourished at Thomas & Sons Ltd, where he gained a wealth of experience in business and entrepreneurial skills. Aside from his own duties as a chauffeur, he took the initiative to help in various departments at the office, such as sales and accounting. His boss recognized his competency and in three months of working at the company, he was promoted as an accountant. His ambitions did not stop there. During his free time at the office, Sookoo began doing sales for the company, eventually surpassing the numbers of their actual sales representatives. Impressed with his work ethic and skills, Sookoo and his boss developed a close relationship.

During this time, Sookoo’s father wanted to purchase a vehicle in Port of Spain, however being from Sangre Grande he did not know the area well enough. Still with little to no contact between father and son, his brother reached out to him to help them find the location in Port of Spain. With no knowledge of his promotion to accountant, Sookoo invited his family to his place of work. Finding out about his success at the company and seeing him dressed up in his suit and tie filled his father with happiness and pride for his son. This small moment acted as a catalyst in allowing them to mend their relationship and within the next week Sookoo returned to his home in Sangre Grande.

As time passed, Sookoo continued to gain favour from his boss as he excelled at his duties, stayed late at work and went above and beyond what he was required to do. His boss began paying him extra money apart from his salary for his extra efforts. Eventually, he also bought him a vehicle to make his commute from Sangre Grande to Port of Spain easier. Still, his vision of owning his own business persisted. Grateful for the security and financial stability that his current job afforded him, he decided to begin his business of importing and selling toys on the weekends.

Multi Marketing Agency Ltd

The relationships Sookoo built doing sales for Thomas and Sons Ltd and accompanying his boss to the racetrack helped immensely in growing his new business; so much so that he began earning more money selling toys on the weekends than his entire monthly salary as an accountant. This business continued to grow over a period of five years and evolved from just toys to household items, shoes, clothes, vehicles and a collection of other products, procuring anything his customers needed under the trading name Multi Marketing Agency. In 1988, Multi Marketing Agency was registered as a trading company, employees were hired and the business grew so large that Sookoo had to leave Thomas and Sons Ltd to manage it full time. After proving themselves as a reliable and successful business in Trinidad, Multi Marketing Agency extended their operations to Tobago and in 1990, the business was registered as a limited liability company.

Even after hiring employees, Sookoo continued doing sales for his company, going to business places and clients’ homes and selling to them directly. This is how he was able to meet another significant influence in his life that led to the opening of his second company. While doing sales in San Fernando, he met a gentleman who was having trouble selling the large stock of candles in his warehouse, one of Multi Marketing Agency’s most popular products at the time. Sookoo, confident in his abilities, offered to help and without even knowing who he was, the man allowed him to a box of candles. To the man’s surprise, Sookoo returned to the warehouse shortly after having sold all the candles he took and presented the man with his money. Shocked, he offered to let Sookoo take whatever portion of the sales he wanted.

Multi Foods Processors Ltd

After this encounter, Sookoo and the gentleman became close friends and associates. Knowing that he was trustworthy, he left Sookoo with the keys to his warehouse and allowed him to take goods as he needed them, collecting his share of the earnings after they were sold. Later on he came to Sookoo with another business opportunity of selling food items. He brought samples of corn flour from Venezuela and gave them to Sookoo to sell. As with everything else, he was able make a profit from selling the corn flour. Since this business was also becoming successful, Sookoo decided to form another company through which he would only sell food items and thus, Multi Food Processors Ltd was created in 1990 and registered in 1995. 

Since the creation of his two business, Sookoo needed a larger space to store his goods and conduct his operations, so he moved his business from his home in Sangre Grande to a warehouse in San Juan owned by Kirpalani’s, the largest investment group in Trinidad at the time. Multi Food Processors Ltd began forming relationships with the supermarkets and shops in Trinidad and Tobago and supplying them with Promasa Corn Flour and other food items. Due to the demand for the products in other islands, Multi Food Processors Ltd began exporting regionally.

In 1997, Sookoo moved his business to Fredrick Settlement where he built his own office and warehouse building. The businesses continued to thrive at the new location until 2001 when there was a fire at the warehouse, causing Sookoo to lose everything he had built in an instant. In spite of this calamitous incident, Sookoo never lost hope and within one year rebuilt his entire warehouse and reclaimed everything he had lost.

Jaipur Trading Ltd

All of his experiences guided Sookoo to believe that the success of his businesses was not only attributed to his hard work but also to divine intervention. This belief inspired him to be involved in many charitable activities and share his fortune with others. One of his main charitable endeavours was assisting the Divine Life Society Temple in Chase Village. Together with the care takers of the temple, he began raising funds for upkeep and maintenance and hosting prayer services. His confidence and genuine spirit caused others to believe in what he taught and gave hope to the members of the community.

While being involved at the temple he formed a friendship with swami Brahmadeo who was visiting from India. While others assumed that as a businessman, Sookoo was assisting the temple for a personal gain, swami Brahmadeo understood that his love and charity for the temple was genuine and selfless. As their friendship developed, swami Brahmadeo confided in Sookoo his actual purpose for visiting the country: to find a reputable business person to promote Indian Businesses from India in Trinidad and Tobago. Swami Brahmadeo was confident that Sookoo’s knowledge, experience and business facilities would allow him to successfully accomplish this endeavour and introduced Sookoo to the man from India who was in charge of establishing and promoting Indian businesses around the world through trade fairs. In order to effectively execute these trade fairs in Trinidad, Sookoo decided to register his third business, Jaipur Trading Ltd in 2004.

Jaipur Trading Ltd found spaces in Trinidad that would be able to accommodate booths where the Indian business owners would bring their products and sell from. Jaipur Trading Ltd was responsible for executing the first ever Indian Trade Fair in Trinidad and is still responsible for the ones currently operating throughout the country.  Eventually, Jaipur trading grew and other companies across the country sought their services of renting and installing booths to promote their businesses at events.

Shivnarisa Import & Export Company & Shivron International Food Consolidators Ltd

The company also invited small businesses from other Caribbean countries to promote their products like (jam, pepper sauce etc.) at trade shows that they were hosting. This sparked an interest for these products and local companies came to Sookoo requesting the regional countries’ products to sell as they discovered them at his trade show. However, since they were small items, the businesses did not want to import an entire container of that one product. Thus, Sookoo created his fourth business, Shivnarisa Import & Export Company to facilitate these transactions between countries. In conducting these transactions, Sookoo recognized that companies from the same island were all requesting different food items. In order to export all these different items in one container bound for the same country, he created Shivron International Food Consolidators Ltd to consolidate food items.

Shirina Enterprises Ltd

Through Shivnarisa Import & Export, Sookoo began doing imports on his own. However, his clients began requesting items that were made in Trinidad and Tobago in order to qualify for CSME tax exemptions. In order to achieve this, the company would have to create their own name, packaging and labels for the products, identifying that they were manufactured in Trinidad and Tobago for export etc. Consequently, Shirina Enterprises Ltd was developed to do packaging for export.

Today

The Multi Group of Companies is now recognized globally for their services and the quality of their operations, conducting business with companies throughout the world, from industry giants like India, China, Columbia and Venezuela to countries all across the Caribbean. Having built their business on the foundation of spirituality, humility, charity and cherishing moral values, they have established a strong, family-oriented organization that will last for generations to come.