Back in the 1930s, HEWADEWAGE HENRY GUNARATNE of Enderamulla, Wattala (a little town just north of the capital city Colombo, Sri Lanka – then know as “Ceylon”), began repairs of radios, domestic appliances and ceiling fans, among others, using his skills and expertise of electrical products in the service of his friends soon to be his regular and long-term clients.
Setting up his workshop in small premises on De Vos Avenue just off Galle Road in the Colombo suburb of Bambalapitiya, the young Gunaratne worked on his clients’ electrical appliances. That was during the hours of the day when he was not on duty as the Projectionist at the nearby Majestic Theatre movie venue.
The repairs carried out by him were based not on monetary considerations; for Hewadewage Henry Gunaratne it was a matter of honour and service. Honour as in carrying out an honest repair on each and every appliance that was entrusted to him; service to his fellow men at their time of urgent need.
These were pioneering days of electrical supply in the island and Henry Gunaratne was of that pioneering spirit. Probably the earliest of local born entrepreneurs in the electrical repair and service sector anywhere in the island, Henry Gunaratne’s fame spread rapidly.
Electrical power generators were much the order of the day due to numerous constraints on the national electrical grid, and our Founder soon added to his little business the repair and maintenance of these all-important pieces of machinery, including the servicing and charging of batteries for the generators. Further, he went on to supply mobile generators on period hire terms.
Henry Gunaratne’s strong and close association with the cinema, through his day-job employer Majestic Theatre Limited, brought him in touch with others in the film and entertainment sphere. They came from near and far, and they were confident they would find the quality of service that Gunaratne was reputed to provide. And find it they did.
The cinema also affected young Gunaratne in another way. A deep appreciation of cinema, the film industry and the performing arts, arose in this intelligent, cultured and sensitive young man.
With his flair for client relationship, born of the desire for quality service, Henry Gunaratne saw the development of lasting associations with clients from a wide background. With the workload that soon came his way, it was necessary for him to be in his workshop full time. So cordial was the understanding between Gunaratne and the management of Majestic Theatre that all electrical repairs, wiring and electrical installation, and related work of the cinema hall continued to be entrusted to him.
In 1940, Hewadewage Henry Gunaratne named and registered his enterprise Majestic Electricals, the name Majestic in recognition of his grounding at Majestic Theatre and of the close and lasting relationship born from those early days with the people of that esteemed establishment.
Majestic Electric Company (Pvt) Limited has been built on the solid foundation of honour, service, and quality. To date, these traditions endure in our thoughts, actions, and relationships with our clients, associates, and staff.
Our Founder had set his ambition on giving back to the community the appreciation of and love for cinema and culture that he gathered beginning from his days in the movie center and in days since. The pioneer in him, always close to the surface, showed through when he produced a series of movies in the Sinhala cinema industry, his debut work ‘Hanthane Kathaawa’ capturing the Rajitha-Maura award in the International Film Festival of 1969 in India – Bombay, where 72 countries contested. As was the practice with all of his staff, Henry Gunaratne offered young starters a way to experience and position; he presented young unknowns such a platform, shooting them to recognition and fame coming from his award winning production. His first movie was groundbreaking and, is still, even half a century later, widely considered an outstanding example of the country’s movie industry.
While movies provided an avenue for his cultural return to the community, the electrical service enterprise he had founded remained his commercial mainstay. In 1953, now well established as the number one in the field of electrical repair, servicing, engineering and contracting, our Founder was awarded the unique commission of creating a fitting display to welcome to our island the recently crowned Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and of Ceylon on the coronation tour of the Commonwealth, using the largely unexplored media of lighting. The active outlook, out of the box thinking, and artistic imagination of Henry Gunaratne conjured up a gigantic crown illuminated by hundreds of electric light bulbs, as a special salute to the new Queen. Installed many floors up on the rooftop of the tallest building - Chartered Bank - nearest the port of entry of the royal flotilla, to Colombo. The brightly illuminated larger than life crown, the creation of our Founder, stood out in all its shimmering glory visible far out to sea to present the first signs of a welcoming nation to its young Queen.
As the business of Majestic Electricals progressed, Henry Gunaratne found his customers required electrical wiring accessories. He imported quality accessories and lighting fixtures from reputed manufacturers and offered his customers products they could depend on, in the most modern design.
The Company grew as a means of providing the widest range of quality products and services to the clients, all of whom our Founder enjoyed close interaction with. Over the decades, generations of the same families have got their requirements of electrical wiring accessories, light fixtures and related material, at Majestic Electricals, based on the strong and valued relationships initiated by our Founder, and the Company’s adherence to honour in service and quality in products.
We are a value based Company, built on a powerful foundation of service and quality. Tradition is strong here at MEC; it helps us to maintain our values. Innovation is continuous; it helps us remain the most favoured supplier of goods and services to our customers.
Over the decades we have carried out many electrical installations of diverse nature for a wide range of clients. Collaborating closely with the best of architects, consultants, fellow-contractors, and others, we have delivered to the project owners the most suitable electrical package. Apartments, apparels production and warehousing areas, banks, educational institutions and universities, foreign diplomatic missions, hospitals, hotels, industrial facilities, malls, office towers, sports complexes, trading houses, and numerous others, have received the Majestic touch.
Our installation and contracting activities have included indoor and outdoor cabling and related equipment, wiring installation for data transmission and telecommunication networking, appropriate devices, security systems, power generating equipment, and others.
Millions of finished products come off the production lines of overseas manufacturers established in Sri Lanka’s various Export Processing Zones, where the total electrical package installed by Majestic Electric Company - wiring, electrical distribution, control and protection systems, general and task lighting, power regulating and monitoring - providing comfortable dependability on the quality levels of installation and equipment.
Our Chairman is Hewadewage Nimal Gunaratne, eldest son of our Founder. Joining the company in 1964 under the protective wing of his father, he was followed by younger brother Hewadewage Sunil Gunaratne in the same year, the third brother Ranjith joined in 1969. Nimal Gunaratne began duties with our Domestic Electric Repair Department. Here, much experience was to be gained in handling the job at hand and, more significantly, understanding and appropriately servicing our customers’ needs. Nimal and brothers Sunil and Ranjith took their respective turns in this Department, learning the basics and putting in much valuable experience. In 1970 Nimal and Sunil were brought aboard as the Directors of the Company, with our Founder the Chairman of the Board, being joined by Ranjith in 1975.
In 1960 and 1965 two of Ceylon’s largest expositions were organized - the Colombo Plan Exhibition and the American Industrial Exhibition (at Race Course, Reid Avenue) - and Majestic Electric Company was awarded the electrical and illumination contracts for both these grand and prestigious events. Nimal and Sunil joined hands with our Founder in executing these high profile projects successfully.
In 1965, with knowledge and skills gathered in the Domestic Electrical Repair Department, Nimal established the Control Panels Division, an industry set up to supply our in-house requirements on the installation projects we do. Soon, production diversified to include trunking, lighting fixtures and other fabrications to supply the projects that the Company was working on.
The 1970s marked the early days of textile printing in Ceylon, later know as Sri Lanka. Majestic Electric Company set up a production facility in this pioneering industry and became a strategic partner of the State in implementing the Government’s textile printing programme, based on product quality, our ability to deliver on time, and our resource capacity. Vast yardages of printed textiles from the MEC production unit reached the community islandwide in an uninterrupted supply throughout the State’s programme that ran from 1971 through 1977.
Younger brother Sunil established Majestic Industries (Pvt) Limited in 1995 for the manufacture of Moulded MCB Enclosures, the first of its kind in Sri Lanka, yet another successful pioneering venture of the Majestic family.
Our Founder, Hewadewage Henry Gunaratne, passed away in 1989, his contribution to the nation having been trailblazing in the areas of service and industry, in culture, the healthy Group of Companies, and the capable leadership succession equipped with the timeless values that he had lived by and had inculcated into his business and family.
The eldest son Hewadewage Nimal Gunaratne was invited by the Board of Majestic Group to take over the as Chairman, with the second son Sunil bring offered the position of Managing Director.
The Majestic group of Companies continued to grow; Majestic Industries (Pvt) Limited was incorporated in the late 1980’s, and in early 1990’s Majestic Enterprise was established, followed by Majestic Investments (Pvt) Limited in the late 1990’s years later. Majestic Industries registered an industry for manufacture of Molded MCB Enclosures with the Board of Investment (BOI) of Bangladesh, carrying the name Majestic Industries Bangladesh (Pvt) Limited, whilst our other overseas venture Majestic Electric Company (N. Z.) Limited is overseen by our Group Managing Director Sunil Gunaratne, who is resident in Auckland. In 1989 Majec Mobil was established with the intention of supplementing our already popular domestic electric repair service, our mobile service units constantly on the move. This rapid response service handles electrical breakdowns immediately so that our customers could enjoy the security, convenience and comfort that comes with virtually uninterrupted electrical supply.
In 2001, illness took away the youngest brother – Ranjith. It was a sad loss to everyone at Majestic group of Companies, especially his family. He had been running the successful Domestic Electrical Repair Division that had for decades taken our services to a large portion of our community.
So close is our relationship with our associates that Nawaloka Constructions Limited and Sierra Limited, possibly the two largest main-contractors in the country, recognize Majestic as their electrical sub-contractor for all their construction projects.
Evidence of our commitment to long-term relationships is found in our long and cordial association with our partners in the business, and with our bankers, two of the leading financial institutions in the country - Bank of Ceylon and Hatton National Bank, respectively since 1940 and 1960 respectively.
The influence of our decades long presence in the electrical contracting industry is widely recognised by project owners, our partners, state authorities, and others in the business; a fact that we at Majestic group of companies view as a step toward reaching a further point in our service to the community.
The width and depth of experience gathered over the decades of the Company’s busy and diverse operations by everyone at MEC gives us explicit understanding of the requirements of modern electrical installation materials, equipment, processes, and standards. While British Standard Specifications are commonly stipulated in the electrical contracting and engineering sector in Sri Lanka, we at MEC have in-depth experience of International safety standards, practices and norms. The Ceylon Electricity Board - Sri Lanka’s State Organisation for providing and distributing electric power islandwide, and the national authority and policy maker in this area has repeatedly given us high ratings for our installations, all of which strictly conform to prescribed standards.
Our sound business ethics since inception have placed us in a position of strength in the electrical contracting arena, being recognised as the preferred project contractor; strong financial and administration fundamentals enabling us to reach our present position in being suitably prepared to carry out our role of electrical contractors and engineers in projects of whatever magnitude in the progress of our partners.
The best interests of the client drive us forward in our search for delivering the best, always.
Ours is a family run company closely interacting with associates and staff. Our Founder’s sons have continued to practice his guiding principles; the third generation is now taking position to progress further with this immaculate heritage.