Ambeon Holdings: Driving innovation across its businesses

• Adjudged as Most Innovative Company by Global Banking and Finance Review for 2019

Ambeon Holdings PLC, a medium sized diversified conglomerate, was recently adjudged as the Most Innovative Company in Sri Lanka for the year 2019 by Global Banking and Finance Review – the leading financial and banking magazine in the UK. 

The Group was recognised and conferred this prestigious award for being future centric, embracing technology, inculcating innovation into its DNA and cascading it across the various businesses. The dynamic Group, which commenced 2019 by repositioning and transforming its business vision to take on the dynamic, technocentric business world of tomorrow continued transforming latent opportunities into lucrative ventures that delivers sustained value to its various stakeholders. 

Receiving the award, 

Ambeon Holdings PLC and Ambeon Capital PLC Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer Murali Prakash stated: “It is with pride that we acknowledge this award.”

He further commented: “At Ambeon Group, Innovation is at the strategic level with the corporate office having a separate vertical to drive it across the various business entities. We believe that this, along with focus driven corporate values, would build a sustainable future-centric organisation in today’s dynamic business environment.”

The Ambeon Group is reputed for its market dominance in the areas of financial services, manufacturing of porcelain and textile products, real estate, technology and strategic investments. The Group prides itself as being future ready, as it continues to be astute, driven, nimble and visionary – with an expanded range of products, strong globalised local brands, premier technology and innovation platforms, extending its footprint across new businesses, markets and regions. 

Ambeon Capital PLC and Ambeon Holdings PLC Group Managing Director Chief Executive Officer Murali Prakash

“The acquisition of Sri Lanka’s leading Systems Integrator and Information Systems Provider Millennium IT ESP has steered the Group positively with greater penetration through the tech and innovation business. Whether it is embracing modern technologies within its businesses, introducing new age technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) or meet emerging needs and driving sustainable and profitable business outcomes, the Group is now well geared to enable and facilitate innovative solutions for its existing customers or provide future-based transformation solutions for organisations within the country or the region,” elaborated Prakash. 

Millennium IT ESP, one of Sri Lanka’s leading systems integrators and technology solutions providers, together with its global partners, has produced robust technology architecture and infrastructure, reliable and scalable enterprise solutions for many industries and leading conglomerates; including banking and finance, telecommunications and apparel manufacturing. 

For the telecommunications sector, the company provides enterprise grade critical servers and implementation of enterprise consolidated backup solution based on Veritas Netbackup for enterprise data centres. 

The fast-changing dynamics of the branded apparel sector demands the fail-proof orchestration of a complex supply chain. Upholding system integrity is crucial for delivering high-standard performance in designing, manufacturing and logistics at high speed. Millennium IT ESP has the experience and expertise in implementing a robust security solution for its compute and endpoint which is a security infrastructure to enhance capacity to confront the whole threat lifecycle, protect critical technology infrastructure and ensure information security and safety. 

Millennium IT ESP is also at the forefront of building cognitive solutions to free talent from low value-adding tasks. ‘AI BoT’ applications designed by Millennium IT ESP have significantly lessened the human interface in people operations at leading apparel groups and customer service at leading banks and telecommunications companies. 

The application of cognitive computing has accrued many benefits to Millennium IT ESPs’ customers: increased access to employee services, lower cost, speed and accuracy of responses and freeing talent from low value and uninspiring work. In addition to this, management of Sri Lanka’s very first outsourced Security Infrastructure with an ultra-modern Security Operating Centre (SOC) and Network Operating Centre (NOC), while protecting networks, websites, databases, servers, data centres and other technologies, ensures the continuity of clients’ businesses with uninterrupted network service. 

The porcelain sector, which consists of Dankotuwa Porcelain PLC and Royal Fernwood Porcelain Ltd., have embraced the latest technologies into the business. The e-commerce-based website which will be launched during the course of this year has incorporated 3D technology and AR, making it the first company in Sri Lanka and first in the porcelain sector within the region to embrace such technologies into digital sites. In addition to this, innovation is being used for new product development and technology-based process improvements within the factory floors to minimise costs and enhance efficiencies across the value chain.

The financial services company consisting of Taprobane Capital Plus Ltd. has commenced exploring the opportunities posed by fintech, embracing the latest technologies available within this sphere. The textile cluster, which includes South Asia Textiles Ltd., is on a positive trajectory to infuse future based innovative technologies and processes to enhance speed, efficiencies and offerings to its customers and partners. The Group is therefore in the process of experimenting for enhanced efficiencies across manufacturing with IOTs and other related new age technologies. 

“We are constantly challenging ourselves to look beyond boundaries, catalysing future opportunities through readiness. As such, the Group now better understands tomorrow’s changes and is transforming to be pre-emptive and thus demystifying the unknown. This simply means understanding the direction that the techno-centric consumers of each industry are heading towards, embracing innovation-based strategy and mapping out the future strategy with the aid of the right technology enabling and facilitating this shift across all businesses. It’s certainly heartening to see Ambeon having been recognised for innovation. It proves that our intuition to inculcate innovation across our businesses is correct, contributing positively towards our widely diversified portfolio. We will continue to be a leader in innovation, encompassing a more technological footing backed by strong financial services with a view towards sustainability and future-proof,” concluded Prakash

The subsidiaries of Ambeon Holdings PLC include Taprobane Capital Plus Ltd. (a leading financial services provider with a wealth of experience in capital markets in Sri Lanka), South Asia Textiles Ltd. (leading manufacturer of exceptional quality weft knitted fabric, the company also specialises in knitting, dyeing, finishing, printing, brushing, sueding and preshrunk fabric for leading global brands such as Victoria Secret, Next, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Calvin Klein, Decathlon and Adidas), Dankotuwa Porcelain PLC and Royal Fernwood Porcelain Ltd. (manufacturers of porcelain tableware and gift items for global giants such as Oneida, Macy’s, Country Road, Lenox, John Lewis, Crate & Barrel, Megros, Jashanmal, Ralph Lauren, the Walt Disney Company and Dilmah), Millennium IT ESP (Sri Lanka’s leading information systems solutions provider delivering IT solutions for many industries; including banks and finance, telecommunications, apparel and leading conglomerates) and Colombo City Holdings PLC (real estate). 

The dynamic Group, which was repositioned and transformed recently to represent the Group’s business vision and to take on the dynamic, technocentric business world of tomorrow, continues to take the leap and transform latent opportunities into lucrative ventures that delivers sustained value to its various stakeholders. 

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