Ascentic’s journey into top 50 Best Workplaces in Asia

Reflecting its continuous drive for excellence in people and culture, Ascentic, leading software development company based in Colombo with offices in Sweden, recently emerged as one of the Best Workplaces in Sri Lanka 2021 while positioning itself among top 50 Best Workplaces in Asia 2021 in a mere four years since its inception.

With a trust index score of 96% in the Great Place to Work (GPTW) employee survey, Ascentic was ranked at 43rd Best Workplaces in Asia 2021 under the Small and Medium Category List by the GPTW Sri Lanka.

The company was also featured among the top 10 Small and Medium IT/ITES Workplaces in the country while being recognised among 15 Best Workplaces in the country for Millennials for the first time.

Ascentic was ranked alongside 200 other leading companies that is highly ranked in their respective national lists for the past two years. The latest survey was conducted among 3.3 million employees covering 16 countries across Asia and the Middle East, considering a confidential 360-degree assessment of employee experience towards the company’s trust, innovation, inclusivity, values, and leadership.

The company was founded in 2017 with a vision to become the best workplace in Sri Lanka for driven tech professionals – where anyone can learn, grow, and create outstanding digital solutions. In particular, Ascentic’s founders Anna Kalm and Patrik Alm have been strong believers of building a sustainable culture that is centred around the organisation’s employees’ wellbeing, allowing each employee to enjoy what they do, challenge norms, learn new things, and openly discuss just about anything that is work or personal related. All of these factors are critical for employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance which in return allows them to develop the right mindset to come up with great solutions in the fast-paced technology solutions arena reaching their full professional potential.

Within a short span of four years, Ascentic has seen an exponential growth and emerged as one of the leading software development companies in Sri Lanka by expanding its workforce while strengthening its position as a digital solutions provider for Swedish companies. Ascentic’s target customers are mid-sized Swedish companies, that struggle to recruit and retain IT, professionals, locally. By combining teams with high technical competence from Sri Lanka with senior Swedish project management who are close to the customer, Ascentic provides world-class software solutions for these companies which are in a diverse set of industries to meet the ever-changing needs by getting them up to speed without long start-up times and ultimately ensuring significant value creation to the end-customer.

Given its focus on the Swedish market, Ascentic has been fostering a Swedish-Sri Lankan work culture in its Colombo office combining the best from the two cultures. Especially, building a Sweden-inspired work culture in its collaboration with Swedish companies has enabled Ascentic to resemble their way of working that of their partner Swedish companies ensuring a smooth flow of operations.

Over the period, Ascentic has been an inspiration for other corporates in Sri Lanka to build a working culture that is based on gender-neutrality, equity and inclusivity. Ascentic embraces diversity and inclusivity, and possibly have some of the best work-life balance policies in the country. Everyone proudly calls themselves as ‘ascenders’. They show grit, craftsmanship and are very self-driven, embracing their inner geek to fearlessly explore new paths with courage. At Ascentic, everyone is encouraged to be their unique self – whilst still working great in teams.

Recently, Ascentic made history in Sri Lanka’s corporate sector by introducing a four-month paternity leave to its employees. Having had a look into the parental leave policy, Ascentic’s co-founder Anna Kalm realised that mothers were indirectly impacted by the existing parental leave policy given as they were the only ones who had the option to take leave, which has caused the mothers to stay at home for more extended periods potentially impacting their careers. Therefore, she decided to provide four months of leave for both mothers/fathers/partners while bearing the financial cost of paying their salaries.

The company has also been leading in the technology with its initiatives in empowering women, beginning with its own management and crew.

While the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many industries challenging the financial stability of entitles, the software industry has seen a uptick in demand for solutions to face the challenges created by the pandemic; therefore, this has given Ascentic the ground to stand on in the face of such setbacks.

In February this year, Ascentic declared open an office in Gothenburg region in Sweden being the first Sri Lankan company to do so. The main purpose of this expansion is to cater to the Swedish market to complement the region’s growing demands especially among small and medium-sized companies. The move is also expected to allow Ascentic to work even closer to the business and support them with project management, product ownership, and similar roles that require close cooperation with respective the company’s operations and management.

Although, many companies are forced to embrace the need to work from home in the new normal working environment brought by the pandemic, Ascentic is known to always have a flexible work from home policy where it allows the employees to work from wherever they want, as long as they deliver the expected outcomes.

Ascentic today has over 90 employees and various initiatives are on the pipeline to actively expand the team.