The Power of Personal Branding: Piyumi Hansamali's Success Story

In the world of luxury, the revelation that a Dior handbag, retailing for $2,800, costs just $57 to manufacture, sparked widespread discussions about the power of branding. This story, which emerged in July last year, highlighted how a brand's allure can significantly inflate the perceived value of its products.

Around the same time, Piyumi Hansamali, a rising star in the beauty industry, gained attention for her impressive success and wealth from her skincare range. Despite her achievements, the media coverage was often lukewarm, and at times, even dismissive.

Fast forward to late March 2025, and Piyumi's story has resurfaced. An inquiry revealed that she sells her products for ten times the cost of manufacture, with claims that items costing 5,000 to produce were sold for 35,000. However, this isn't entirely accurate. While she does sell a particular pack of cosmetics for 35,000, it contains six items, averaging around 6,000 each. A closer look at her page shows that the individual prices are slightly less than those at Spa Ceylon.

While the quality and manufacturing approval process of her products are beyond my expertise, it's clear that Piyumi's success is a testament to the power of personal branding. Much like Otara Gunewardene with Odel and Merrill J. Fernando with Dilmah in the pre-digital era, Piyumi and others have harnessed the digital attention economy to achieve remarkable success and wealth.

This trend is also evident in Sri Lankan entertainment, where acts like Wasthi and singers such as Shehan Meeranga command higher fees (800k and 1.5 million respectively) than more established artists. A recent example is the charismatic figure behind Wild Cookbook, who not only launched a restaurant but also celebrated 10 million followers on YouTube.

Instead of criticizing Piyumi, we should celebrate her achievements and learn from her journey. Her story exemplifies the transformative power of personal branding and the opportunities within the digital attention economy. By leveraging social media and digital platforms, individuals can achieve remarkable success and redefine traditional business models.

Piyumi's journey is a reminder that innovation and adaptability are key to thriving in today's fast-paced world. As we witness similar success stories in various industries, from fashion to entertainment, it's clear that the ability to capture and maintain digital attention is a valuable skill. Let's embrace these lessons and support those who are pioneering new paths to success.

Nelum Kuluna the Movie: A review

 Politics is no laughing matter.

With a title like Nelun Kuluna and an A-grade cast of talented actors playing serious roles, I walked into the theater expecting a very serious docu-drama. about politics, corruption, and power struggles.

I never expected to be laughing so much till my sides hurt.

It was only a couple of minutes after the movie started that I realized I was witnessing Sri Lanka’s first Dark Comedy.

It's very difficult to review a movie without giving away the plot.

But it could be described as a cock and bull story. Pun intended.

Something to do with a big erection. Just like the Nelum Kuluna

Let me say that finally, I realized the meaning of tentigo which is the English title of the movie.

I know Illango as a commercial director.

Generally, Illango’s style is lovely, beautiful very artistic shots. But this was completely the opposite.

Which is a good thing in my eyes. No one should be tied down to a single style.

Yet his creativity shone through.

From the title itself, to a single shot of a hand crank that is used to start old cars. To the arrack bottle placed on atop of a freshly filled grave.

In my opinion, the original Nelun Kuluna is a waste of time and money.

Definitely not this one.

Breaking up with a Bank

 

“Thank you for calling HSBC, we are recording this call to serve you better.”

“Serve you better? He ha what a blatant lie!” I laugh crazily and say to myself.

In the past few years I have heard this way too many times for my sanity.

Serving one better is the last thing they have on their mind.

In fact these guys would not know the meaning of the word service.

They have mastered the fine art of making it more and more impossible for their customer to access them. All in the name of efficiency.

The biggest culprit of course is their phone system. Called the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system.

Dialing into it means you’re entering a maze that takes you from pillar to post without being able to connect to a human.

You can always request a call back. I received the callback I requested one month later. At 11 pm!

Once, I had to put up a public post on Facebook to be able to get through to their customer care. Because calls were getting dropped as there weren’t sufficient staff to man their call center.

I have realized that this is done on purpose to ensure that the low value clients drop off in frustration.

Yet, I have been holding on tenaciously.

Mainly for emotional reasons.

This was my first bank account.

I still remember walking into their large branch nervously. As a teenager, this was unfamiliar territory to me.

The pretty lady behind the counter giving me a questionable look when I said I wanted to open an account.

Her look transforming into surprise when I pulled out the required cash from my pocket.

It has been at least 40 years since.

Over the years, I have also been a corporate client as well.

It was when they refused to grant us a 5 Million facility even though we had over a billion rupees going through our account over many years, that we realized that these banks are not meant for medium-scale local businesses like ours. Their primary purpose is to cater to their international clients.

Recently they upped the ante of making life difficult for their non-prime customers.

Now you have to maintain a minimum balance of 100k in your account. If not, you need to pay 2500 a month for the privilege.

Why would anyone want to keep 100k idle earning the lowest interest possible?

What added insult to injury was that they did not even provide a phone number to find out more information. Instead, directed you to their online chatbot.

When asked how I should close my account? All that the chatbot could tell me was to go to my banking app and send a secure message.

Which I did. I was sent an acknowledgement saying that they would respond within two days.

Guess what? As I write this more than two days have passed. They are yet to contact me.

I am definitely getting served better.

The Grave Digger's Son.

Out of all the people who may have walked into my office room on that busy Monday the last person I expected to see was him.

He was the grave digger from the cemetery.

His discomfort showed this was unfamiliar territory from his usual lush green workspace.

He hesitated to talk to me and refused a seat even though I offered him one.

“I need an advertisement” were the first words that escaped his lips.

What kind of advertisement would this man want?

Is he trying to sell a land? Maybe he wants to look for a house by placing an ad in the classified sections.

These were the thoughts that were going through my mind.

But then I realized this request had a desperate undertone.

Slowly but surely the story came out.

The cemetery is in the heart of the city.

According to the City regulations, his son is automatically accepted to what is considered the best and most popular school in the country. Royal College of Colombo.

A college that has given birth to prime ministers, top academics, and billionaires.

Many parents go to extreme lengths to get their sons into this school.

From using the influence of powerful politicians to offering large amounts of money as bribes disguised in the form of donations.

Whilst everyone would believe this young boy is extremely lucky to study here, in a way it’s kind of a curse.

A large majority of his classmates would be from families of extremely wealthy businessmen, top government officials and politicians, or those belonging to the high society of Sri Lanka.

As a child from a less privileged background, the gap between his desk and that of the other students was miles apart.

In most schools, donations are sought for various school projects.

There was no difference in this class as well.

The class teacher was forcing each child to get at least one souvenir advertisement for such a project.

Enormous pressure is exerted on the children by the teachers as they too are competing with one another. Those who do not comply are shamed in front of the entire class. In the end, the pressure exerted on the children finally lands on the shoulders of the parents.

For some parents getting an advertisement was an easy task. But not for a humble grave digger.

The guilt of his inability to protect the image of his child was crushing him.

He gets a small monthly stipend from me to maintain the grave.

“Sir can you give me an advertisement and you can deduct it from the money you give me” he asked me in a desperate voice.

A full page would be one year's worth of income he would have to forego.

But he was proud and did not want to beg.

As a father, I understood his pain and frustration.

I too had faced similar requests from the school my daughters attend which was a stone's throw away from where his son studies.

I knew the teachers could be mercenary in their mission to extract every last possible penny from their students.

Fortunately, I was sufficiently blessed financially to be able to handle these requests.

So yes we gave him an advertisement.

No, the cost was not deducted from the money paid to him.

It was a different man who walked out of my office.

A proud father with his held eye knowing that he can be a hero in his son’s eyes.

The Fake Death of Poonam Pandey - Did they go too far.

 What a shame! Another young life taken away by cancer. This was what went through my mind when I saw the news about the death of Poonam Pandey on Daily Mirror. In fact, I was a bit confused, because the Daily Mirror had said Poonam was an actor in the headline itself. But the article had a picture of what seemed like a female. “Well, these are modern times, where one cannot say if a person is a he, a she, or an it” was my response, and shrugged off any future thoughts about this situation away.

But then my Twitter feed began to fill with various posts about how all this was a scam. An online campaign done by a digital agency to create awareness of “Cervical Cancer”.

Wow! That was my first response.

It was not a wow of admiration though.

Faking a person's death is generally associated with Insurance Fraud or Major Criminals and Gangsters who want to disappear from the face of the earth.

But now it is used for communication purposes.

Suddenly a quote from the book Shanthram came to mind. “Sometimes it is necessary to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. The important thing is to be sure that our reasons are right, and that we admit the wrong — that we do not lie to ourselves, and convince ourselves that what we do is right.”

Yes, most definitely people have now heard about cervical cancer which can be easily cured.

But this truth has been based on a lie.

We have played with people’s emotions. We have also diluted the trust people place on sources they gather information from online.

There is a thin line between a good campaign and an absolute disaster. To me sadly this is a disaster.

Suck You Evernote

Relationships are extremely important to me. I consider them the building blocks of success, and take pride in the relationships have built over the years.

Sadly this is something that those who own Bending Spoons a European app manufacturer with Ryan Reynolds as an investor, have no idea about.

This all started when they (Bending Spoons) bought an app called Evernote.

Now I have been an Evernote user since 2016.

It has served me well.

At certain times in my life, I have been a paid user for a couple of years.

Then all of a sudden these guys increased their annual plan by nearly double to 140 dollars a year.

This made me reconsider my options.

I realized the main reason why I was paying for Evernote was because it gave me the privilege of using it on three different devices instead of two.

I also realized that I do not use it very much on the third device. It was mainly on my laptop and my phone.

So I downgraded from the paid plan to the free tier.

And that was when the trouble started.

Suddenly I realised that I was facing a stranglehold on what I could do on the app. And as time went by the stranglehold became tighter and tighter.

Right now you cannot open more than one notebook per month and have more than fifty notes.

This price increase reminds me of Martin Shkreli who raised the price of a tablet of a vital Aids medicine from 13 Dollars to 750. After purchasing the license to manufacture it.

Bending Spoons, also known as BS — I cannot help but notice that BS is more popularly known as the acronym for Bull Shit — was trying to profit maximize on one side.

While loading EN with features that might have increased the operating cost as well as made the app more clunky. This also meant that the software had to be upgraded constantly. Virtually every other day. Trust me, that’s extremely frustrating.

I still believe they could have offered a more economical model for people such as me who use Evernote for just note-taking, restricting some of the bells and whistles.

Anyway by this time I was extremely frustrated. And decided to switch.

So right now I am typing this on Apple Notes. Which is excellent and comes FOC with my devices.

Additionally, apple just launched a journaling app that is highly intuitive which I am testing out at the moment. Not sure I might use it long-term. And of course, there is One Note which gives me the freedom of handwriting as well as typing.

Yes, I have 8 years' worth of notes in Evernote which I shall migrate slowly but surely.

But I wish this relationship could have ended better.

“But its price and very limited free version make it hard to recommend to anyone who isn’t already using it. As such, Evernote is no longer an Editors’ Choice winner. Most people should look to OneNote instead because it works just as well and is considerably more affordable.” — PC Mag November 29th, 2023

A new invasive species threatens Yala!

A new alien species is invading Yala and threatening to ruin the park. They behave like animals but move about in four-wheel drive vehicles with names such as Land Rover Mahindra and Toyota.
“Why are you bringing this party down this track?”
That was the question posed to our tracker as we were doing our evening round in our own vehicle.
The underlying tone of this accusation was “What right do you have to bring these guys who are traveling inside Yala in their own vehicle without hiring a Safari Jeep from one of us?”
It's as if we were encroachers into their territory.
These jeep drivers believe that they are the authority when it comes to the park. Way above the pecking order than the employees of the Wild Life Department.
In fact, they are a law unto themselves.
They drive around at high speeds.
They block the roads.
They do not follow the simple etiquette of moving your vehicle after five minutes of a sighting. Giving another person an opportunity to see the animal as well.
All this was something I have experienced for quite some time. Without making a fuss.
What got my ire and motivated me to pen this article was when I saw them blocking the path of animals.
Elephants to be precise.
It was a herd of elephants with a baby wanting to cross the road and go back into the jungle after drinking water from the tank.
When one of these Safari Jeeps drove in and purposely blocked the very path they were going to cross.
Then more jeeps came and quite literally piled up one on top of the other.
Giving the herd no room to move at all.
This disturbed the elephants. So much so that two elephants stood guard blocking the vehicles till the others crossed.
One jeep even tried to push against the elephant and was head-butted as a result.
Which serves him right.
But this driver was putting his passengers' lives in danger as well. The vehicle could have easily toppled over. Or a passenger attacked. Since they were tourists it would have created a negative image about visiting the park. Which would ultimately affect not only the park but the Jeep Drivers as well, financially.
This situation has come about due to two facts.
One being not enough trackers to accompany every vehicle.
The second being the enormous political power that the Jeep drivers wield. The Wildlife Department officials are powerless in the face of it.
I do not trust the government to step in and correct this situation. After all it's the two-legged mammals that vote not the four-legged variety.
My hope is an organisation such as WNPS will come forward to provide training for these drivers along with an endorsement system that has to be renewed yearly. Those drivers who qualify can display a sticker similar to a license on their vehicles assuring the passengers of a civilised experience within the park.
Finally, people will be able to choose safety and decency towards animals over danger and cheap thrills.