As a young girl growing up in Nadi in Fiji, Kavita Raniga was inspired by her aunt Ramila, her mother’s younger sister. Just 11 years older than Kavita, Ramila had studied pharmacy in Wellington in New Zealand and come home to Nadi, the tourist gateway to Fiji, to work as a pharmacist.
“She’s my hero figure, my main inspiration,” says Kavita. “At that point, there were far fewer women in Fiji who had a graduated with a degree and were out working.
Today, Kavita herself is surely an inspiration to young people, as co-founder – with her husband Ajay – of the Budget Pharmacy business in Fiji. They have three pharmacies, a pharmaceutical wholesale and distribution business and a growing ecommerce presence, as well as other varied interests.
From an Indian background, Kavita was born and raised in Nadi but went with her siblings and cousins to an aunt and uncle in Melbourne in 1987, just before two coups that ultimately led to the declaration of Fiji as a republic. Just 16 at the time, she recalls the “big culture shock”. Swapping Hindi for English, she quickly made friends and excelled at maths and science subjects in particular.
Kavita studied pharmacy at the then Victorian College of Pharmacy in Melbourne, as rules in place at the time meant that graduates from a pharmacy course in Fiji could only work in hospital settings. “They didn’t allow the pharmacist to open up a retail pharmacy,” she explains.
During her studies, Kavita worked weekends as a “shop girl” in a retail pharmacy in Melbourne and also did an internship in the Monash Medical Center in Clayton, a Melbourne suburb. After getting her pharmacist registration at the end of 1993, she swapped her part-time shop job for a pharmacist position in the same pharmacy.
She recalls highs and lows from the period. She was engaged in December 1992 to Ajay, who she had known since school in Fiji, and who had gone to qualify as a pharmacist in Wellington. In January 1993, sadly, Kavita’s mother died from complications associated with an autoimmune condition, aged just 44. “It was a tragedy. It took me some time to come to terms with it,” she says.
Kavita and Ajay came home to Fiji in August 1994 and married in December that year. Ajay’s father, also a pharmacist, already had a pharmacy in Nadi so they opened a pharmacy in Sigatoka, about 45 minutes’ drive away. Then the opportunity arose to buy a business with retail pharmacies in Nadi and Namaka, close to Fiji International Airport.
“It was an ideal situation for us as two pharmacists because we could work in separate pharmacies,” says Kavita. “We got a loan from the bank and started operating that business as Budget Pharmacy in 1996.”
Their first son was born in 1998 and their second in 2000, with both sharing November 7th as their birthday. Kavita says the Indian tradition of family generations living together meant they always had help with the children, which allowed her to balance motherhood and work.
“A lot of my girl friends had the situation where they weren’t allowed to work outside the home. They were just supposed to be at home, cook at home and look after the household. I was very fortunate I had good family support,” she says.
In the early years, the labels on medications were all typed up on typewriters and the company would fax its monthly order to suppliers overseas. “We had to record the details and numbers on prescriptions in a big book. It wasn’t electronic at all,” says Kavita. The arrival of email, facilitating instant communication, was “very big” and she recalls Ajay having an early ‘brick’ mobile phone.
All pharmaceutical products dispensed in Fiji are imported so Kavita and Ajay began to import stock directly for their own business around 2000. This grew into a wholesale business supplying other pharmacies, leading them to open a warehouse and distribution centre, which now has a walk-in refrigerated room to manage temperature-controlled vaccines.
In addition, Budget Pharmacy sells over-the-counter medication and non-pharma products such as make-up, cosmetics and even some foods through its website. Baby items, including strollers, walkers and bouncers are popular online purchases. “Fiji is still a small market for online shopping. It is mainly people in the remote areas who are ordering from us,” Kavita says.
Kavita and Ajay were also involved in formulating a new structure that allows locally-qualified pharmacists to work in retail pharmacies. One benefit is that Budget Pharmacy can now hire more local people and expand. “The reason I can take time to talk to you is because I have a full-time pharmacist, a local graduate, working back in my pharmacy,” she says.
Kavita recalls the day in 2006 when Clive Davidson, a New Zealand businessman, came into her pharmacy in Namaka. A regular visitor to Fiji, Clive had founded Toniq, a software company whose healthcare management system was market leader in the pharmacy sector in New Zealand.
“He just walked in, introduced himself and explained what he was doing,” says Kavita. “Toniq wasn’t just pharmacy software to do prescriptions but it was a retail point-of-sale system as well. It was a very good structure for a business like ours.”
Budget Pharmacy became Toniq’s first customer in Fiji and helped the company adapt its software to the nuances of the local market such as differences in VAT and dispensing rules. In May 2017, Clive sold Toniq to Clanwilliam, after a period of friendly in-person discussions with Clanwilliam Founder & Group CEO Howard Beggs.
Over 900 pharmacies in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands now use Toniq software, including most pharmacies in Fiji, while more than 1,000 stores use Toniq’s retail product. Kavita welcomes initiatives such as the Toniq helpdesk and daily data-driven reports that help run their business.
Budget Pharmacy now comprises the pharmacies in Nadi and Namaka as well as hospital-focused pharmacy in Suva, the Fijian capital. Kavita and Ajay have also owned and sold other pharmacies over the years, often in conjunction with friends and family. All told, the company employs close to 60 staff. Kavita herself still occasionally works in the pharmacy, typically checking prescriptions.
Reflecting on the typewriter days, she says: “Technology has become such an integral and important part of everyone’s life. We have electronic stock control. With my mobile, I can look at emails, I can organise meetings, I can be anywhere. I don’t have to be in the office or pharmacy full-time.”
The Ranigas also have a boutique shop in the Port Denarau retail centre in the main tourist area of Nadi. Cleverly, it operates as a ‘satellite’ pharmacy, which can take in prescriptions to be filled by the Budget pharmacies. They also have a wellness spa, which is part of the well-known Pure Fiji brand and is managed by a cousin of Ajay. “We’re all together in the family business,” she laughs.
In addition, Kavita and Ajay are shareholders in Sunergise, a sizeable solar power business that operates in New Zealand and across the Pacific Islands. Ajay was a co-founder of Sunergise Fiji, whose projects include installations at the marina in Port Denarau, Coca-Cola Amatil in Suva and many hotels, resorts and businesses. Sunergise is also part of a rural solar project in Fiji that is supported by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. In 2019, Todd Corporation, a New Zealand energy group, took a majority stake in Sunergise, which continues to expand.
Not surprisingly, Kavita is involved in initiatives to support and encourage women in business in Fiji. In 2017, she was approached by the government to join the Fiji Electoral Commission, which oversees the country’s elections. She served two three-year terms, from 2017 to 2023, during which there was an election in Fiji and she observed polls in New Zealand, South Korea and India.
Reflecting on her journey, Kavita credits her entrepreneurial streak to her roots as a Gujarati Indian, who are known for their business acumen. “There are good Gujarati businesspeople all over the world; we can venture into anything,” she says.
As an example, her own father had a duty-free business but now, aged 82, has a fishing equipment company with two stores. “He has never fished and he has never eaten fish – but he has done his research and done really well,” she says. “I went to China for the first time this year to attend the China Fish trade show in Beijing with him and my older brother. He’s amazing.”
And what about the next generation? While neither of Kavita and Ajay’s sons has studied pharmacy, she has not given up hope they might get involved with the Budget Pharmacy business. “Who knows what they future holds?” she says.
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