Lankan educa government jo entrepreneur
While Sri Lanka’s start-ups and millennial entrepreneurs are facing a massive challenge in sustaining the industry, the root cause is the country’s education system and government jobs, say some industry experts.
On Wednesday the Business Club of the Sunday Times (STBC) organised a panel discussion on ‘ Startups- The Age of Entrepreneurship’ at the Kingsbury Hotel in Colombo. Four industry experts -John Keells Holdings Deputy Chairman and PickMe Chairman, Ajit Gunewardene, takas. lk co- founder and CEO, Lahiru Pathmalal, wow.lk and SLIIT co-founder and Director, Thilan Wijesinghe and Calcey Tehnologies founder and CEO, Mangala Karunaratne were the panellists at the discussion.
During the discussion Mr. Wijesinghe stressed, “The killer of entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka is the poor education system and government jobs.” This is the root cause for the start-ups to become unsuccessful and find it difficult to sustain in the industry, he added.
Mr. Gunewardene at the beginning of the discussion stated that youngsters struggle at the initial stages to set up a start-up mainly due to several reasons like lack of business experience, executing the business plan and raising capital expenditure. For a tech start-up company, a clear execution plan is critical and you need to have the sources of funding in flow and have the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in place.
Adding to that Mr. Pathmalal said, “Today the ecosystem has developed to a tremendous degree since 2012. We have been advocating the government to help start-ups to grow and change the mindset of the people. You have to take risks in terms of cost.”
Businesses start with mentoring and cross border association. In start- ups, growth of the company is measured monthly and not annually unlike in big corporate companies, pointed out Mr. Wijesinghe. “As start-ups you need to focus on how to merge the people with the capital investment. Today with mobile phone penetration, even small businesses are growing tremendously,” he added.
Mr. Karunaratne noted that you need to have the passion to begin and run a start-up. Disruption is happening vigorously worldwide and it will continue throughout.
Looking at the Sri Lankan start-up indus- try 10 years ahead, Mr. Gunewardene said, “The start-up ecosystem we are in today is not something we predicted 10 years ago and it will be something unpredictable 10 years ahead.” Start-ups that can adapt to the environment amidst disruption from other startups will survive and the rest will perish,” he noted.
Answering the same question Mr. Pathmalal responded, “The country needs to move into efficient ways to get things done in another 10 years while consumer competence is considered important. We need to build a knowledge-based economy.”
The state should provide the tools and equal opportunities to people in the IT and e-commerce sector. Sri Lanka is one of the most inefficient and least productive countries in the world at the moment. The challenge is not how you create the product, but to identify the pitfalls in solving the issues, noted Mr. Wijesinghe.
Responding to questions from the audi-