Leapset joins LBR/LBO to drive ‘Disruption’ in Sri Lankan business

 Leapset CEO Mani Kulasooriya describes what differentiates successful disruptive companies at the 2015 LBR LBO Enterprise Summit​

Sysco Ventures President and SVP Business Development Brian Beach at the LBR LBO Summit on disruption at large 

tradition based companies

Leapset partnered with LBR/LBO this year as principle sponsor to champion the theme of ‘Disruption’ at their 2015 Enterprise Summit: ‘Sri Lanka-Technology Drives Disruption: Embrace or face extinction’. Scores of the country’s industry leaders and several regional business stalwarts presented and participated in the full day conference on 14 July at the Oak Room, Cinnamon Grand. Over 300 business professionals attended the event. 

The summit questioned how prepared leading companies were for the mass scale disruption that was taking place in their industries: the force of change that leapfrogs incremental innovation in favour of change so massive it often completely destroys existing practices. The summit particularly focused on the way that disruption has always been a force in business but has recently become a powerhouse due to new possibilities created by the exponential evolution of technology. 

The conference consisted of five sessions, namely: ‘Business Leaders Round Table – Business Model Disruption is Here, Are you Ready?’, ‘Leadership Competencies for Disruptive Innovation’, ‘The Power of Customer Centric Disruptive Innovation’, ‘Understanding and Enhancing Customer Experience Using Digital’, and Building Disruptive Business Models: Opportunities and Challenges’. The keynote speakers for the event were Brandix Board Director Udena Wickremesooriya, 3M Asia Technical Director Tim V. Stagg, MAS Holdings Chief Growth Officer Nathan Sivaganathan, WOW.lk CEO Sheyantha Abeykoon, Transportation Group John Keells Holdings PLC President Romesh David, Google Performance Lead Khurram Jamali, Sysco Ventures President and SVP Business Development Brian Beach and Leapset CEO Mani Kulasooriya.

They were joined by several panellists including Leapset MD Sri Lanka and SVP Engineering Shanil Fernando, SVP Go to Market Jim O’Connor and VP of Sales Warner Siebert. All the sessions are available to be viewed at www.lankabusinessonline.com/lbr-lbo-enterprise-summit/ 

Mani, during his presentation, broke down the characteristics that successful disruptive companies share from their inception: “All disruptive companies have a crazy idea, they enter incredibly competitive industries, they reinvent the user experience and more often than not they are industry outsiders. These companies seem irrational, and in fact they are; even the idea that you would invest in a company that is entering a highly competitive industry, with crazy ideas and no industry experience seems irrational, but if there is a formula for what makes companies disruptive these might just be the key ingredients,” he said.

Leapset itself is an example of a disruptive company, using technology to revolutionise the restaurant industry. Based in California, the company is the most successful local example of a Silicon Valley start-up. The Leapset Restaurant Operating System cuts across a multitude of merchant-customer touch points and provides an array of services from online ordering and point of sale to analytics and guest management, ensuring that restaurateurs can cut out the white noise of their daily business, empowering them with tools that they often haven’t even conceived of yet.

Leapset is strategically aligned with the world’s largest food distributor Sysco. Brian Beach, President and Senior Vice President of Business Development at Sysco Ventures, the arm of Sysco that is looking into ways to evolve the services that Sysco provide restaurants, also spoke at the summit. Brian explained how Sysco emerged as a disruptive and visionary company that set out to change the way restaurants get their food from suppliers by centralising the source to becoming the 50,000 employee strong organisation it is today; “Disruption is not always perceived as destruction,” he said. “In a big company like Sysco with a strong sense of tradition, we have to disrupt the way we see ourselves as a company before we disrupt anything else. We’re not just a food supplier anymore and by acquiring and investing in companies like Leapset we drive disruption. No person or company is ever exempt from being disrupted.”