Sunday Times (Sri Lanka)

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.”

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Sri Lanka