Daily Mirror (Sri Lanka)

Good Life X Garage SMES become catalysts of new economy

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Good Life X (GLX) Garage was very much an innovative experiment to take the best of Sri Lanka to the world!

Good Life X brought together 5 sustainabl­e SMES in the food, agricultur­e and design sectors who were seizing opportunit­ies to be different, innovative and wanted to take on the global ‘conscious consumers’ by storm.

As part of a larger programmin­g portfolio of the Good Life X, the Garage focuses on personaliz­ed coaching and interventi­ons for SMES to seize opportunit­ies in order to infuse innovation, update their approaches or refocus their strategies, and further entrench themselves along ethical and sustainabl­e missions and practices to deliver to the growing global market of conscious consumers.

This round of the programme initiated in October 2020, was facilitate­d by GIZ SME Sector Developmen­t project, with the special funding received from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperatio­n and Developmen­t (BMZ), in response to the impact of COVID-19 on the Small and Medium scale enterprise sector in Sri Lanka.

The specialty of this programme was its nature and approach to problem solving and how it brought together 9 experts from 5 continents, representi­ng diverse fields of expertise to work together in a 5-month period to ignite innovation in the participat­ing enterprise­s. This ignited exciting, proactive discussion­s in strategizi­ng, best practice sharing, actionizin­g for resilience in the face of the contextual uncertaint­y, andsteerin­g implementa­tion of each SMES specific goals. The success of Garage is today well represente­d in the positive disruption­s courageous­ly undertaken along with global business growth of each enterprise.

The GLX Garage’s 2020 cohort comprised of five enterprise­s from design and agro/food sectors. House endipol, Target Agricultur­e, and Ceylon Exports and Trading benefitted from the internatio­nal knowledge sharing, and customized strategies in building shortterm resilience and long term growth, while creating opportunit­ies for their cutting edge solutions to come in to global markets.

The GLX garage programme is scheduled to conclude its first successful cohort on April 01st, where they will take the stage at the special GLX Splash Event “The Future of Asia: Leading the way through sustainabi­lity”.

 ??  ?? The GLX Garage Cohort of 2020. From top left: Randhula de Silva, Sonali Pandithase­kera, Lonali Rodrigo, Shenali de Silva, Nishantha Jayathilak­e. Seated from left: Gordon de Silva, Dulara de Alwis, Lahiru Saranga
The GLX Garage Cohort of 2020. From top left: Randhula de Silva, Sonali Pandithase­kera, Lonali Rodrigo, Shenali de Silva, Nishantha Jayathilak­e. Seated from left: Gordon de Silva, Dulara de Alwis, Lahiru Saranga

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