Start-up Genome and ICTA launch 2020 Global Start-up Ecosystem Report
The 2020 Global Start- up Ecosystem Report (GSER) by Start-up Genome and the Global Entrepreneurship Network was launched this week at The Ecosystems Couch Conference.
The GSER is the world’s most comprehensive and widely-read research on startups. Its release comes at a critical time when several start-ups in Sri Lanka are running out of funding and facing closure in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the organisers said in a media release.
The Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) engaged Start-up Genome to benchmark Sri Lanka’s performance against more than 250 start-up ecosystems globally in the report. It has identified the Sri Lankan government’s support for technology companies and competitive talent as reasons for start-ups to operate in Sri Lanka. The report recognised Sri Lanka for being the number 2 destination among global startup ecosystems for affordable talent.
Reaffirming the government’s support, ICTA Chairman, Jayantha De Silva said, “The value of Sri Lanka’s start-up ecosystem has more than quadrupled from Rs. 5.4 billion to Rs. 21.8 billion in the past two years. ICTA is committed to facilitating the continued growth in ecosystem value and start-up output. We, as the ‘Island Of Ingenuity,’ take pride in our product engineering talent pool which has delivered world-class products and gained investor confidence globally.”