SLASSCOM gears up to launch ‘Startup Sri Lanka’

• Programme will start with 25 start-ups this year

With the objective of taking local start-ups to commercial level and thereon to the global market, the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Forum of the Sri Lanka Association for Software Services Companies (SLASSCOM) recently kicked off an ambitious agenda, with the main highlight being a programme to mentor and uplift local start-ups. 

“Sri Lanka has immense talent and creativity – there are so many innovators out there but not all of them become entrepreneurs – that’s the gap we are trying to bridge,” said Entrepreneurship and Innovation Forum Board Lead and Board Member Anura De Alwis.

“There are a lot of good initiatives out there to support, facilitate and mentor budding start-ups but most of these are neither continuous nor consistent. We wanted to create sustainability in this support ecosystem that will power start-ups to be enterprises,” he added.

The forum is focused on creating a three-way impact: to build a product-based and outward-focused industry, to create a society with a conducive environment for peer learning and acknowledgement of failing fast and to expose start-ups to the international network to become successful enterprises,  thus contributing to the economy and industry export goal.

The programme will start with 25 start-ups this year, including the six winners of Oslo Innovation Week Accelerate 2020, who showcased their innovations at the Oslo Innovation Week 2020 Top 100 pitches, six innovators from Cutting Edge 2020 hosted by Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT) and nine from IEEE Innovation Nation Sri Lanka. 

“We are assessing them on what they need mentoring on and then we will assign a mentor for each innovator for a year,” explained De Alwis, highlighting that there are several volunteer mentors helping out with the programme this year.  

To make the mentoring programme a sustainable one, the forum is keen on operationalising the system, having paid mentors and streamlining the mentoring mechanism from next year onwards. 

Headed by De Alwis, the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Forum is powered by a promising team of professionals with experience and expertise in innovation, entrepreneurship and start-ups. The team comprises of Priyantha Bethmage, Charindra Wijemanne, Suren Nanayakkara, Romani Rupasinghe, Chathuranga Manamendra, Rajitha Kuruppumulle, Uditha Wijesundara, Achini Meekanda Wattage, Dr. Windhya Rankothge, Upendra Peiris and Sisira Kumara.

“By June 2021, we want to fully operationalise Startup Sri Lanka, which will be the accelerator to kick off Sri Lanka’s start-up ecosystem,” concluded De Alwis.