You are the managing director of Olam Agri, based in Dubai. Could you describe your career so far
I come from a farming family, which sparked my early interest in commodity trading. Unlike many industries where success depends on the product, in this field, the individual makes the difference. That idea fascinated me.
After completing my MBA in India in 1999, I began trading veg-oil at a domestic cooperative but wanted an international career. Olam offered me a role in Nigeria, where I spent two years in the bush originating cotton, sesame, and cashew, managing logistics and learning risk management from the ground up. I then moved into rice and sugar imports, building distribution networks and solving challenges in an underdeveloped banking and communication environment.
After four years in Nigeria, personal circumstances led me to return to India, where I joined ICICI Bank to develop agricultural lending programs. It was exciting, but I realized banking wasn’t for me. I rejoined Olam in Rotterdam, trading hardwood from Central Africa and Brazil into Europe. Adjusting to Europe’s fragmented business cultures was a steep learning curve, but it taught me how to navigate diverse markets.
In 2010, I moved to Dubai to trade basmati rice across the Middle East. While I built strong relationships, I found the credit risks and volatility outweighed the rewards. Feedback from the market encouraged me to shift focus to more liquid commodities like wheat and corn, which I’ve been trading successfully since.
Today, as Managing Director of Olam Agri in Dubai, I lead a team focused on balancing innovation and risk in this dynamic industry.
What prompted Olam to enter the grain markets?
Previously, OLAM was reluctant to enter the grain space. The company felt that the market was saturated as the big players had a dominant position and large fixed capital deployed in assets.
In 2011, there was an opportunity to acquire Crown flour mills in Nigeria. a destination milling business where none of the big boys participated, but the margins were still healthy. We believed we had an edge over the big trading companies as they didn’t operate in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa. We had expertise in these markets and believed we could do better than them.
The historical investors in these markets – mainly Indian or Lebanese families – were well established. We realised that trading was our differentiator. We could trade globally, which could differentiate us from the existing investors in those markets – at least in wheat.
What were your first moves, and how did the business develop?
To trade successfully we had to participate in origination, we decided to enter Russia. At that time, it was not competed out. It was an emerging origin.
We were at a confluence with the milling investment in Nigeria and the beginning of origination. I brought in some Middle East customers, and we made our first bulk shipments.
We continued trading wheat, but our customers also wanted corn. To trade wheat, you must understand corn. We were already following the corn market, so we started trading it. We realised that Brazil would be our most significant origin and bought FOB for the first two or three years.
The Black Sea and Brazil grew rapidly in export volumes as their production costs were lower than in the U.S., Canada or Australia.
When we started milling in Nigeria, nobody wanted Russian wheat, but we milled Russian wheat, which was $150/mt cheaper than HRW. Our clients in Asia said they couldn’t trust Russian wheat. Even the Iranians used to pay $10-15 /mt more for German wheat over Russian wheat. The consumers realised the milling quality of Russian wheat after trials over multiple seasons (of course the bug damage and other aspects of Russian wheat also improved over this period as the industry grew). The same happened with corn, with clients increasingly accepting Brazilian corn at the expense of Argentinian and U.S. origin.
So, you took advantage of a structural shift in trade flows as Brazil and Russia increased market share in wheat and corn. But didn’t the other established players also see that shift?
Crops were increasing significantly, and the market needed somebody to take the liquidity. When the farmer comes to sell in Brazil, he sells two to five million MT weekly, and nobody wants to hold this kind of position. The consumer doesn’t want to buy when the farmer wants to sell. You must offload the risk; we found that few people can manage that risk.
Nidera and Noble were faltering, as were some of the smaller players. It helped us to acquire talent. The Japanese trading companies had made investments in Brazil to compete with the likes of Cargill or Bunge. They had bought slightly disadvantaged assets and were not doing well. There was overcapacity, and margins were faltering.
How did you scale up?
We learned a lot between 2011 and 2015: how to manage risk, price, and trade relative value. We were doing it at a small scale but were growing in confidence, building the infrastructure regarding systems and processes. In the early days, we used to struggle to get a global position or to get the mark to market right, but by 2015, we were in a position where we could scale up.
We were a small startup within Olam. Few believed we could take on the established players and trade at scale. They thought we could do one or two trade flows into Nigeria or maybe a niche destination like Iran, but we would never win in the Brazil to China or Black Sea to Indonesia markets.
Companies like Dreyfus or Cargill have developed a keen sense of what moves the market. They see information quickly and act on it almost intuitively. Only five or six companies see a global picture, not a regional one. They have the systems to bring information together and make trading decisions based on it.
Many companies in our business are regional companies. They don’t see a global picture. We could do it because we had an international team in place. We had Brazilians in Brazil, Chinese in China and Russians in Russia. Our global team is present across all the major markets and origins.
The European experience dealing with various nationalities and different kinds of people helped us build a multinational, multicultural team that could operate as one unit and have confidence in each other.
We gained the confidence that we could operate at the same efficiency and speed as the established traders. We were on an even playing field with the five or six global companies. Once we had that confidence, we could grow our volumes. We now have sizeable presence in most important Grain, Oilseed and Oil trade flows, putting us in the top six or seven companies which operate globally.
I am satisfied with what we have achieved in a competitive industry where the incumbents have so much heritage.
Do you trade freight?
We quickly realised we could not trade in volume unless we took positions on freight. We now have an excellent freight trading team which does internal and external business. We trade all sizes and types. We do voyage, time charter and ownership. Not many companies in the grain business transitioned to being freight traders.
Do you trade soybeans as well?
Yes, we trade soybeans, it is a very important product and flow for us. The market has liquidity and a big role for a trader like us.
How do you see your business progressing from here?
Size and scale (presence in important geographies) is an advantage in our business. We want to be big, not because we want to plant a flag, but because size gives us the insight and information to trade. At size our market does pose some liquidity and operating risks as well, so we must be very careful on how we size our business and what is the sweet spot.
Our markets are always evolving, never a dull moment. While we have guiding principles, we cannot assume any of our plans to be fixed. We continue to expand our destination footprint in processing and value added, we will also seek out opportunities where we can expand trading and origination profitably.
You have moved from being a local trader in Nigeria to a global trader. OLAM has made a similar move from a local West African trader to an international trader. How easy was it for you personally to make that move, and how easy was it for OLAM to make that move?
It is not easy. Many things must fall in place.
OLAM has two parts: the traditional businesses and the businesses we started later. By the time we started the grains business, all the necessary ingredients were in place for us to be a global trader. We began as a global trade house, while OLAM started as a local trader, transitioning to become international in coffee, cocoa, cotton, etc.
Olam initially grew because many companies didn’t want to take the risk of local origination in Africa. They didn’t want to go into the bush and buy from the farmer and do all, let’s call it, the hard work. Olam occupied that space and grew in it. Once we better understood the supply and demand, we said, okay, we can go further and become a trader. That’s how that started.
The grain business started from the other side. Our grains business started and remained global, and we didn’t want to go local. Going local is not an exemplary deployment of capital. The upstream footprint in our other businesses is much higher than in ours.
The transition from local to global is difficult. You must look at world market parity and forecast outright and relative prices. It involves insight and a change of mindset, working with people across the globe, trying to see which insight is valuable and which isn’t. It comes from experience.
What about margins in the grains business? Are you more dependent on volatility or a margin at every stage of the supply chain?
Our grains business is dependent on volatility and market making. Volatility often dislocates price relationships; we can say the trader provides liquidity to the market where there is limited participation. By trading inefficiencies and mispricing, you’re making the market more efficient. The object of a trader is to make the market more efficient so that the farmer can produce what the world needs and the consumer gets it at the lowest price.
Many people think that commodity trading is a high-margin business. However, the commodity business’s hallmark is keeping costs down because margins are so low. We bring efficiency to the supply chain. We transport the commodity from the farmer to the consumer at the lowest price and lay the risk off in the markets. That way, the consumer gets something at a low cost.
We often sell to the end consumer cheaper than we bought from the farmer. We can do that because the financial markets allow us to lay off risk. We can sell to the consumer when the absolute prices are lower. We can do this as we have relative value trades, hedging, and many other ways to manage price risk.
The margins in our business are low. A one per cent margin would be fantastic.
We earn good returns on equity because we leverage. We use bank finance. If someone were to look at this business straightforwardly, they’d ask, “Where’s the margin?” It’s probably the lowest margin business in the world – even negative margin if you were to look at trades in line. New people don’t enter because they don’t see a margin. The margin is hidden in how you trade. It’s a very efficient industry.
What’s your USP? What differentiates you from the other big boys in the grains and oilseeds business?
Our global footprint and global talent differentiate us from regional players like Chinese crushers or Black Sea exporters. It delivers us trading insight.
What sets us apart from the larger companies is that, for good or bad, we don’t have their history. They have significant investments in origination and the supply chain, these provide them with immense advantage in seeing crop flow and gaining insight, this is hard to replicate, however it is also very capital intensive has a high bar of return to meet the threshold. Whether they provide returns or not, changing those models is challenging.
Compared to this we have limited capital deployed and can choose which part of the value chain we want to participate in. We choose what we believe will give us the highest return on capital and equity. We can pick and choose where we go.
Do you have a trading philosophy?
We like risk. Our business is based on taking and managing risk
We like relative value risk more than outright or flat price risk. You know when there is mispricing regarding spreads, time, qualities and origins. We like liquidity.
SALIC (Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company) has a 35.43 per cent shareholding in Olam Agri. ADQ (Abu Dhabi Developmental Holding Company), a sovereign wealth fund, has an indirect 45 per cent equity stake in LDC. COFCO, a Chinese government company, owns a majority of COFCO International.
Is the quest for food security driving these state agencies into the agricultural commodity business?
It is one of the reasons. Still, the world is more food secure than in the past. We are getting better and better at providing food to the world. We can produce more food than the world needs.
However, there are still concerns over insecurity based on geopolitics, state boundaries, Export bans, taxes, tariffs, and non-tariff barriers exaggerate this uncertainty.
Are you worried that state intervention might make the markets less efficient?
We already see that with the Russian export tax on wheat. It is changing the way we trade. It would be better if it were a free market. The Russian farmer essentially pays the tax and doesn’t get a fair value for his produce.
Government intervention is a fact of our markets. Governments have always interfered with the free and fair functioning of markets. The geopolitics are such that I fear intervention will increase, making it harder for traders. Or it might give more opportunities to traders depending on where they are positioned and how they see it. We’ll just have to trade around it and with it.
You’ve had an exceptional career in the commodity markets. To what do you attribute your success?
Learning from the markets, being humble, seeking the unknown, and not risking it all on one single idea or trade.
However, perhaps the most important thing is having a very capable and diverse team in terms of culture, nationality, and trading style. It helps us see markets from different perspectives. It is challenging because you cannot sit in a cocoon and feel your view is correct. You’re challenged every day, but all those challenges help us do better.
Could a young person joining OLAM now have a similar career to yours?
Young people joining now are luckier than when I joined; we had a tiny canvas. We learned at the grassroots, and I didn’t have the opportunity to trade the markets till I was ten years into OLAM. I think people joining today have the culture and the canvas.
Still, anyone joining the company must realise that they will be challenged and humbled. You will be on the floor. Does that excite you, or does that leave you cold? Do you feel defeated, or do you think, no, I will get up and fight another day?
Does Olam have a training formal training program, or do you just sit on the desk and learn from people around you?
We have a mixed approach. We have the apprenticeship model where you follow a trader or an analyst and work through the ranks. We combine that with some formal training in a classroom session where senior traders or others in the organisation do various modules. Still, I would say 80 per cent of the learning happens in the apprenticeship model.
© Commodity Conversations® 2025