Mitra Innovation announces major plans for 2019
Mitra Innovation recently announced it has big global expansion plans for 2019, but pointed out the relevant human resources to fuel its goal remains a hurdle in its growth story.
The company that is in its seventh year of operations in the IT industry, aims to double its size to about 400 employees by end 2019, keeping in line with its aspiration of becoming a global company.
However, while the drive and strategic focus has been maintained, the company said expansion in Sri Lanka, where the core operations such as Research and Development (R&D) and innovation is handled, having access to ‘technical’ talent is a challenge that is yet to be addressed with the relevant authorities.
“Business is fantastic and we are proud of what we have achieved, however, the challenge we are faced with in moving forward is that there are not many people with technical talent available here in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka certainly has the talent but it is not straight forward. There is a need to work on the graduates further to ensure our requirement is fulfilled,” said Mitra Innovation Co-founder and CEO Ashok Suppiah while addressing the media in Colombo yesterday.
Mitra Innovation currently has a global work force of about 200 employees of which 75 percent are based in Sri Lanka. Within a year it is planned to expand operations, particularly in Sri Lanka, so that it can move along its positive growth trajectory. Maintaining strong performance for the seventh consecutive year, Mitra Innovation for 2018 posted profits without any debt.
The company refrained from sharing any figures, both of performance and investments as the entity that has no immediate plans of listing the group. However, it did indicate some of the subsidiaries would go public in the near future.
With regard to operations in Sri Lanka, alongside making available to local graduates about 200 jobs, Mitra shared that the strategic plans for the island nation includes the expansion towards techinnovation and cloud expertise.
“Naturally, we are aiming for continued rapid global expansion and the developing economies are the most promising ones,” added Suppiah.
In addition to focusing on the UK, Europe, Africa and Asia, in the drive to digitise and empower enterprises operating in developing economies across the globe, Mitra has made significant breakthroughs in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning, he said.
By early next year, Mitra aims to roll out a fully-fledged machine learning and predictive analytics solution for its enterprise customers.
Elaborating further, Mitra Co-founder and COO Derek Bell shared that with the core offerings, plans are afoot to commence Devops, a new service. The unique service will cater to the demands of the telecommunications and financial sectors.
“Our new Devops service will help large enterprises manage IT infrastructure and further innovate how they create added value for their customers,” said Bell confidently. Meanwhile, Mitra Innovation Co-founder and Managing Director Dammika Ganegama announced that in Sri Lanka, and the neighbouring APAC and ASEAN region, the company will provides services similar to what is currently being provided in Africa. In 2018 the tech company launched client servicing operations in new regions such as Kenya, Germany and Europe.
UK headquartered Mitra Innovation is a global technology provider working across four continents that enables smart entrepreneurs, enterprises and public service organisations to accelerate innovative ideas into amazing global businesses or solutions. This is achieved through product incubation, digital transformation, integration services and Cloud-to-cloud integration, with expert skills in WSO2 and AWS technologies.