Students of SLIIT win at Google Business Group Success Stories
Alumni of SLIIT, Vimukthi Liyanage and Shameera Weerasinghe, have hit the international mark in the mobile application world. This dynamic duo have built an innovative application, titled ‘ Mogo Reader’ which was selected as the best project at the highly acclaimed Google Business Groups Success Stories competition, organized by Google.
Commenting on the application, Liyanage said, “Up until now, the country’s mobile users have not had access to news relevant to them in their own language. Sri Lankan news app ‘Mogo Reader’ is about to change all of that. Currently developed only for Android and available on Google Play, Mogo Reader offers categorized, localized news. It’s the first service of its kind for Sri Lanka. Mogo Reader, is a news aggregation app. It picks news from various news sources and it delivers by the users interests”.
Elaborating on the application, Weerasinghe, explained, “Mogo Reader learns the users interests and gathers the interested news sources. At present around 30 40 news sources have been implemented. This application contains articles, images, albums and videos”.
Speaking on the road to success, Liyanage mentioned, we first published this app on Google play store. We faced our first competition; ‘ Venture Engine’. After emerging as finalists at the Venture Engine competition, we submitted our entry for the Google Business Groups Success Stories competition. Mogo Reader became among the final 36 applications, out of 317 participants from 56 countries. After they evaluated our business model we came to the global 9 finalists. An agent from Google, then visited us in Sri Lanka and shot a video on our application and achievements. All 9 videos were uploaded on youtube and through a voting process we were awarded the first place. It was truly a dream come true”.
Elated by the win, Professor Lalith Gamage, President and CEO of SLIIT commented, “I wish to congratulate Vimukthi Liyanage and Shameera Weerasinghe, on this exceptional performance. Earning first place at the Google Business Groups Success Stories competition has paved the way for more opportunities for both Liyanage and Weerasinghe. Google will now provide funding and technological information for this project and organize a visit for them to Google later this year. This will enable them to reach greater heights in their careers and I wish them both success in their future endeavors”.
Liyange and Weerasinghe, attribute their success to the lecturers and students of SLIIT for helping them shine at this competition.
Liyanage, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mogo Solutions and is a trained developer who has used his knowledge and resources to capitalize on the mobile revolution. Weerasinghe, is the Chief Technical officer at Mogo Solutions and the duo are now banking on its potential as only the first step in an Asia- wide enterprise with enormous potential. They will also seek to expand the application into more languages (Mainly English and Tamil) and make it available on IOS and Windows systems.
Elaborating on the application, Weerasinghe, explained, “Mogo Reader learns the users interests and gathers the interested news sources. At present around 30 40 news sources have been implemented. This application contains articles, images, albums and videos”.