Not a merger or an acquisition of Microimage!

Tuesday, 2 April 2013 00:50 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Purasinghe stressed that the new mobile enterprise is not a merger or an acquisition of Microimage, stating that even though he remains a part of the company, he is already not involved in the company’s operational work, adding: “I hardly get involved in operations. The only thing I do is try to build partners outside of Sri Lanka.”

Speaking on this new venture, he stated: “In time to come, I am going to spend more time on this venture because it’s quite a global thing and a bigger challenge.”

Microimage has built their client base from Middle East to Asia and a majority of the leading radio stations in Sri Lanka use mStudio, the only broadcasting automation software developed in Asia, adding: “We have it running in Brunei. We have just completed a big project with the Malaysian National Radio Station. Their entire schedule is done through our platform.”

Speaking of mStudio, he said, “We are the only broadcast software company in the world offering Microimage mobile media and it is a very strong product that competes with the world’s best.”

Microimage is the only successful college start-up company in the country which began when Purasinghe was 19 years of age. Today, they have become a million dollar company and many corporate companies such as Dialog Telecom, 99X, Commercial Bank, HSBC, DFCC, PABC and Aviva use Microimage software.

The company has also successfully built Sri Lanka’s first e-Book store, ‘Book Hub’ in 2008 offering books in English, Sinhala and Tamil. Speaking on this challenge, he said: “It’s not easy, it is a mindset change. All our publishers are very traditional. You need to go and change their mindset to take their books online, but it is happening. Now we have over 200 books on Book Hub and more and more people are adding their books.”

Purasinghe revealed that with the success of Book Hub, they will be launching a Book Hub branded tablet very soon adding: “We have a big vision at Microimage and we want to preserve our Sri Lankan literature for generations to come.”

In comparison to devices such as Kindle, this tablet takes the concept a step or two higher as it supports Sinhalese and Tamil as well and will also feature digital rights management (DRM).

Along this line, Microimage is also hoping to make this a national platform by driving the Government to digitalize all textbooks in Sri Lanka. “So in the future of our rural schools, all they will have to do is take one of our low-cost Android devices to school. The children in Royal College and the children at the rural school will get the same text book even when it gets updated,” stated Purasinghe.

He also revealed other plans to make certain Microimage products cloud-based as well. Currently the company is working on creating another hub similar to the Book Hub, but this time catering to a different category.