GLX expands team of ‘Growth Alchemists’ to drive good innovation

GLX Founder/CEO Randhula De Silva

Anushka Wijesinha

Arj Wignaraja

GLX Program Lead Shenali de Silva

Good Life X (GLX), the cutting-edge catalyst for startups and SMEs in the food, agriculture, travel and wellness sectors, has announced new members joining its leadership team to drive a new phase of growth. 

GLX Founder/CEO Randhula De Silva and GLX Program Lead Shenali de Silva are welcoming on board Strategist and Investor Arj Wignaraja and Economist and International Development Consultant Anushka Wijesinha to share the leadership table in GLX’s ‘2.0’ iteration.

Within just two short years, GLX has effectively validated its proof of concept and re-established itself as an independent private entity – an innovation management company building the next generation of life-enhancing sustainable companies. With new members joining as GLX’s ‘Growth Alchemists for Good’, GLX stands ready to be a collaborator and co-creator to private and public sector partners looking to evolve, innovate and disrupt their organisations and industries, in anticipation and alignment with the future markets in Sri Lanka, Asia and the world. 

Since launching in 2019 within the German development agency GIZ, GLX quickly grew from working with six startups to working deeply with 45 SMEs and startups under an umbrella of multiple concurrent programs. Some of these are cyclical (e.g., GLX Accelerator and GLX Garage) and others were created in response to the COVID crisis (e.g., ‘Stay Good in Business for COVID Tourism Resilience’ and ‘Enterprise Evolver’). 

Randhula said: “As application numbers grew with each program, it was obvious GLX had correctly identified a latent demand in the entrepreneurship and business sector. GLX also drew increased partnership offers from established individuals and organisations in Sri Lanka, Germany, Netherlands, Singapore, Thailand and the USA and others, signalling strongly that businesses, foundations and investors too were inspired by our vision of the future, with an Asia-led and impact-oriented outlook that GLX has.”

For Arj Wignaraja, a veteran strategy consultant and investment advisor, GLX brought the innovative, agile mindset along with the execution capabilities that are required for companies to succeed in the conscious consumer space. “It was a no-brainer to join the GLX team to continue the journey of helping sustainable organisations to refine their purpose, and then leverage local and global expertise to win in these markets.”

Anushka, who brings to GLX a trade and export strategy perspective, GLX’s ability to influence business model change to deliver profitability for businesses while also positively impacting environmental outcomes was a compelling reason to join. “In export markets today, it is no longer just about tariffs, it’s about environmental and ethical standards that are the real differentiators for SMEs. Consumers are more conscious. Governments are getting tighter with regulations. Both of these provide opportunities and challenges, for which GLX is ideally placed to help businesses navigate and win.”

“At GLX, we think of our work as a perfect trifecta of potential,” notes Randhula. Firstly, what Sri Lanka has – a unique heritage/traditional sectors and under-tapped abundance of natural resources; secondly What Sri Lanka is Excited about and building on – our globally demanded tech entrepreneurs and the emerging innovation sector and this all comes together to meet, and thirdly what the World is demanding – the needs of globally oriented conscious consumers,” she explained. We are confident that GLX, with proof aplenty from our past two years, is distinctively positioned to support any enterprise pursuing impact-minded localised solutions and access global opportunities, to scale courageously, creatively, and collaboratively.”

As GLX Program Lead Shenali elaborates, “In addition to continuing to offer our GLX programs for Startups and SMEs, we are now able to take on new public and private sector clients seeking customised solutions to wherever they find themselves in their business evolution. And perhaps most excitingly, with GLX itself having been the product of pursuing new models and thinking, we are excited to help businesses run conscious experiments and investments – creating their own cutting-edge solutions.”