Mariah, a jobless entrepreneur, dreams of a big business in seaweed

Maria Ray's journey as an entrepreneur started with Sterinus Kitchen in Cox's Bazar. That is in 2022. The main purpose of starting his restaurant business was to sell various types of food including sea food or sea fish. During the tourist season, his restaurant has a business of five lakh rupees every month. Keeping in mind the needs of tourists, he prepares various dishes including soup with sea weed or seaweed as a specialty dish. It got a good response.

After that, Maria collected seaweed locally and made dry powder and soap from it and started selling it. In 2025, he sold products and soaps made from seaweed worth about two lakh rupees. Seeing the interest of the buyers, he started seaweed farming in Cox's Bazar's Nuniyachta area last November. He started cultivating Ulva and Gracellaria seaweeds on about one and a half acres of land.

Gracellaria algae are found on seashores during the winter, says Maria Rey. They are used as seeds for cultivation. Ulva algae seeds were collected from Cox's Bazar Agricultural Research Centre. In all, six female members of fishermen families are involved in this cultivation.

Seawater salinity and climate are important in seaweed cultivation. So it is cultivated from November to April every year. Algae can be collected from the land every month. Maria aims to produce about 24 tonnes of Ulva type algae this season. He aims to produce about two tons of dry algae from these algae. Apart from this another 500 kg Gracellaria algae will be produced. In total, this entrepreneur hopes to sell seaweed worth 30 lakh rupees this year. Currently he is selling seaweed online through Facebook and website called Sea Forest BD.

Entrepreneur Maria Ray also said that seaweed is called a superfood because of its antioxidant and anti-aging properties and various vitamins and minerals. Apart from this, seaweed is currently being used as organic fertilizer and animal feed. This natural seaweed can also be eaten raw. At the same time, it is dried into powder or extract and used in food, cosmetics and medicine. Through this, the nutritional needs of women are met, including iodine deficiency of children and others.

Algae Cultivation from Call Center

Maria Ray started working in a call center in Dhaka in 2008 with a salary of Tk 15 thousand. But from the beginning Maria had a strong interest in business. So he used to work in the night shift to do business during the day. At that time he was doing beauty parlor and cloth business. Later worked as marketing manager in an antivirus company for two years. After her marriage in 2018, she started living in Cox's Bazar due to her husband's job.

Maria's father was a chef. So Maria had an interest in cooking since childhood. He used to experiment with cooking in his spare time. At some point the neighbors also started appreciating the cooking. Sometimes he would get orders to prepare lunch at his neighbours' offices. Thus began his journey. Launched online cloud kitchen or delivery-based kitchen from 2019. Then in 2022, he opened a restaurant called Sterinus Kitchen at Labani Beach Point in Cox's Bazar. In 2022, her mother-in-law's friend brought dried seaweed from abroad. From there, the entrepreneur Maria got the inspiration to make this product in the country. Then he visited the internet and saw that this algae can also be used in cooking. Especially the nutritional value in algae multiplies his interest.

Maria Ray said, among Rakhine residents of Cox's Bazar, there is a tradition of eating Gracellaria species of seaweed. He had an opportunity to mingle with the local Rakhines as a known relative belonged to the Rakhine community. From there he has learned many processes of eating algae. Algae of the genus Ulva are well adapted to the Bengali diet. So in my restaurant, I first started fusion of Ulva algae with some dishes including pakoras, soups.

BRAC Bank made Maria's journey as an entrepreneur easier. Maria received marketing training under 'Amrai Tara' from the bank. He said, “This training has helped me improve my marketing skills. So I am dreaming of making the business bigger than before.