Top Sri Lankan start-ups making global impact
Sri Lanka needs to develop more intellectual property (IP) and product creation to retain higher value in Sri Lanka, a top IT expert has said.
Delivering the ceremonial address at last week's graduation of the Moratuwa University - Bachelor of Information Technology, Ruwindhu Peiris - Chairman of SLASSCOM (the main ICT industry body), said that companies like, CodeGen, Microimage, hSenid, SimCentric, WSO2 are making a global impact while innovative new start-ups like Bhasha, Odoc and Jendo are fast gaining traction.
He also spoke of the need to build on niche focus areas of strength to create "Captive Innovation Centres" that help global companies disrupt their traditional value chains. IFS, London Stock Exchange, Sysco Labs and Pearsons are great examples of this already happening. "We need many more," he told the newly-passed out graduates entering Sri Lanka's IT sector.
A third point, Mr. Peiris emphasised, was to position Sri Lanka as the "Digital Gateway to Asia" to attract global foreign direct investments and global talent to come help elevate our leaning and exposure.
Speaking in a general context, the SLASSCO chief and Managing Director at Stax Research Inc, said despite the sensational news headlines globally and locally that paint a very gloomy picture "we" are all blessed to be living in best of times for all humans.
"It seems like almost 80 per cent of news today covers some sort of violence. However, as all good engineers should, when we consider the data you will see that we live in the most peaceful time in recorded history. In 2012, about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence ( war killed 120,000 people and crime killed another 500,000) In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes. As quoted by Harari in his latest book Homo Deus, 'Sugar is now more dangerous than gun powder'," he added.
"Illnesses and disease take up another large portion of our fears. There are many of our loved ones suffering from all kinds of life threatening and painful illnesses which I do not wish to trivialise in any way. Yet, if you were to quantify the amount of deaths that occur due to these illnesses as a per- centage of the whole population and track that over time, we are getting much better at controlling these. What is happening is that our expectation of 'life expectancy' is growing. Since 1900 the global average life expectancy has more than doubled and is now approaching 70 years. We are now starting to view death not as an inevitable occurrence but as a technical problem to be solved. Google ventures is investing 36 per cent of its US$2 billion fund into life sciences start-ups that are all looking to take a crack at 'solving death', " he said.
With the exponential rate of technological developments, people have figured out how to get to these sources of abundance. Solar energy cost has dropped by 58 per cent over the last five years and is now cheaper than retail energy in all but one of Australia's capital cities.
"Millions of dollars are spent and the brightest engineers are working hard to influence and control our minds and actions. Google and Facebook are competing to get to know us better than we know ourselves. Despite having global connectivity like never before, many of us feel increasingly isolated and disconnected from real human relationships. Artificial intelligence and robotics are fast rising and are disrupting how we earn and work. Block chain and cryptocurrencies are starting to dominate headlines and the next wave of mass scale economic disruption is imminent. The Internet was made public in 1995 and within 20 years the landscape of top 10 most valued companies globally was transformed. Companies like Amazon, Google and Apple have taken over the traditional giants. The next wave that will displace these companies can happen in less than 5 years," he pointed out adding: "So much is changing so fast. The cost of not keeping up is increasing at an alarming pace".
He said Sri Lanka is going through one of the most opportune moments to emerge as a dominant player within the region, sitting at the centre of the fastest growing middle- income populations across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. "We must fast become regionally relevant and capture this opportunity to grow. Through SLASSCOM we have been advocating for the Knowledge and Innovation Industry to become the top revenue earner for Sri Lanka in the next 10 years," he added.