SLASSCOM launches ‘Start-up Sri Lanka’ web portal to empower start-ups in Sri Lanka

 Romani Rupasinghe, Sampath Jayasundara and Sandra De Zoysa

The Sri Lanka Association for Software Services Companies (SLASSCOM) driven by its vision of generating $ 5 billion in exports, creating 200,000 employment opportunities and 1,000 start-ups by the year 2025, recently launched the web portal www.startupsrilanka.lk. for its initiative ‘Startup Sri Lanka’.

Spearheaded by SLASSCOM’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Forum, ‘Start up Sri Lanka’ is focused on four key strategies, namely, fostering and nurturing startups to become successful internationally; strengthening and creating a cohesive ecosystem to support the start-up lifecycle; positioning Sri Lanka as a high skilled, low risk trial hub, and transforming young disruptors to become successful entrepreneurs, the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Forum is a key enabler of local startups. As such, the web portal launched, is poised to serve as a unifying hub for Sri Lankan start-ups, operating not only as a platform for making connections but also as a means of encouraging the collective growth and development of the companies. 

Leveraging SLASSCOM’s extensive connections with leading experts from all industries both locally and globally, it will create valuable educational content that would help uplift and empower Sri Lanka’s budding entrepreneurs and facilitate in bringing local businesses together to share knowledge and network through a series of hosted events such as webinars and forum discussions. In addition to being a source of knowledge, the web portal will provide a host of networking opportunities with key stakeholders and enable opportunities to attract foreign investment. 

The website launch took place with the attendance of SLASSCOM Chairperson Sandra De Zoysa, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Forum board Lead Sampath Jayasundara, Forum member Romani Rupasinghe and a host of key SLASSCOM members. SLASSCOM’s chairperson proudly remarked on the accomplishment of the portal already having 100 registered members on the launch day. 

Emphasising on the immense importance of this initiative to Sri Lanka, she said, “It is a proud moment for SLASSCOM and one of the defining moments of our journey in enabling 1,000 start-ups by the year 2025. The Start-up Sri Lanka website will encourage and empower start-ups in Sri Lanka by giving them complementary two-year memberships and support the Startup Sri Lanka Accelerator Program from a digital perspective to ensure the growth of Sri Lanka’s start-ups through a variety of programs

“Start-ups are energies of growth as they can play a significant role in economic growth and contribute to economy dynamism by surpassing innovation and injecting competition. Having a well-connected, nurtured start-up eco-system will give Sri Lanka a huge competitive advantage to emerge as a global destination of choice for knowledge solutions,” explained Romani Rupasinghe – forum member and initiative owner of Startup Sri Lanka digital platform.

The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Forum board Lead Sampath Jayasundara strongly iterated the importance of contributions made by the forum members in order to realise the vision of the creation of the Start-up Sri Lanka web portal. His message of continual growth was clear, “Today is just the beginning. There’s a long way to go and we will keep on adding to this portal, because at the end of the day the benefit will be for the start-ups. Our objective is to help them as much as possible and to expedite their successful journey.”

With the successful launch of the Start-up Sri Lanka web portal, SLASSCOM plans to make the portal a facilitator and incubator for companies while being the premier learning and development portal for start-ups in Sri Lanka. The chamber is keen to ensure that Sri Lanka’s entrepreneurial capabilities are uplifted and will look at initiating further programs and ventures of this nature to facilitate this vision.