Rangoli Kolam plays an important role in the Indian community as applying one during festival seasons at the entrance of a house and prayer room, will bring positive power and avoid bad luck.

“Normally, the south Indian art form of decorating will take almost two to four hours to complete. But, now with polystyrene rangoli kolam, you can save your time and cost,” said GDP Saravanah Rao, the manufacturer of the ready-made kolam.

Designed and made from poly foam material, Saravanah added that this polystyrene rangoli kolam was flexible, easy, not sticky, and could be applied and used anywhere.

“Polystyrene Rangoli Kolam is specially created to encourage our younger generation to continue the tradition by applying it in an easy method, as we understand that many are not good in drawing it or willing to spend two hours or more to decorate it,” he told Bernama today.

Being the sole distributor, Saravanah noted that polystyrene rangoli kolam was suitable for indoor and outdoor application, and it saved tiles from getting stained or coloured.

“Polystyrene rangoli kolam is very suitable to apply especially those residing in apartments and condominiums as one can apply it anywhere, not sticky, easy to apply and to clean, as well as to decorate it. The polystyrene kolam is re-usable and can be kept for more than a year,” he said.  

To a question, he said he got the idea to come up with the polystyrene rangoli kolam during his younger sister's 21st birthday, when he was given the task with his other siblings to draw and decorate a rangoli kolam.

“So I thought instead of spending so many hours to do a rangoli kolam on the floor, I decided to draw on poly foam material, and place it on the floor and then decorate it,” he said, adding that he set up a company in Negri Sembilan in 2010 and started to sell home-made polystyrene rangoli kolam on small scale.

For this year, Saravanah said his company sold more than 2,000 pieces to shopping malls and offices, Indian customers in Malaysia as well as from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

“We used to sell per piece of polystyrene rangoli kolam with coloured rice at RM25, and without coloured rice at RM20. Since the market value has increased, we are selling it (with coloured rice) at RM35,” he said.

 

On future plans, he added that his company would start to export polystyrene rangoli kolam to countries like Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Those interested to get polystyrene rangoli kolam can buy directly from their shops at Little India in Klang, Penang and Malacca, and also place orders directly to Saravanah via online at website www.polystyrenekolam.com.my or email to polystyrenekolam@ yahoo.com .  

- Bernama