“Innovations raise Lankan start-ups to global levels” – Minister Bathiudeen

(FASTNEWS|COLOMBO) – Information technology (IT) innovations in Sri Lanka can boost the low rate of domestic start-ups entering global markets.

“Sri Lanka’s growing service, technology, finance skills-base, and the Information Technology and Business Process Management (IT-BPM) sector, makes it a key candidate for a regional start-up hub,” stressed the Minister of Industry Commerce, Resettlement of Protracted Displaced Persons, Cooperative Development, Skills Development and Vocational Training Rishad Bathiudeen.

The Minister made these remarks addressing an event on Wednesday (27) in Colombo.

“Sri Lanka’s growing service, technology, finance skills-base, and the IT-BPM sector, makes it a key candidate for a regional start-up hub. In this background it is clear that development of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) new ICT start-ups and new ICT innovations play a major role,” said Minister Bathiudeen adding that, “The Government and Export Development Board are working to transform our ICT sector under the recently launched National Export Strategy (NES). NES has chosen six economic sectors for development and IT-BPM is one sector. Under NES, the IT-BPM industry is expected to be a USD 5 billion export sector by 2022. Sri Lanka’s IT industry is globally competitive due to many factors, including the creativity of our workforce. IT Innovations can also encourage to change the low rate of new Sri Lankan start-ups that are expanding to new markets.”

According to the Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies (SLAASCOM), 55% of Sri Lanka entrepreneurs’ start-ups are generating early revenues but only 14% new start-ups are expanding to new markets. New IT innovations can reverse this low 14% rate to higher levels.