Sri Lanka

MEMBERS:

Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka

We, as the ‘Island Of Ingenuity,’ take pride in our product engineering talent pool which has delivered world-class products and gained investor confidence globally.

Ecosystem by the Numbers

EARLY-STAGE FUNDING

<$50 m

GLOBAL AVG.

$687 m

ECOSYSTEM VALUE

<$100 m

GLOBAL AVG.

$28.6 bn

MEDIAN SEED ROUND

$120 k

GLOBAL AVG.

$671 k

MEDIAN SERIES A ROUND

$1.7 m

GLOBAL AVG.

$4.7 m

SOFT. ENGINEER SALARY

$3 k

GLOBAL AVG.

$46 k

E-commerce

Sri Lanka has a burgeoning e-commerce industry with annual domestic e-commerce sales and services estimated at $40 million and expected to grow to $400 million by 2022. Wow.lk, acquired by Dialog Axiata Group in 2015, has been instrumental in establishing Sri Lanka’s e-commerce presence. A recent partnership between Dialog Axiata Group and Alibaba’s Daraz will help enable increased access to affordable ecommerce in Sri Lanka. PickMe, a ride-hailing company, raised $2.5 million from International Finance Corporation in 2018.

Fintech

Sri Lanka’s central bank recently unveiled a new regulatory sandbox. HatchX, Sri Lanka’s first fintech accelerator and the first virtual accelerator in South Asia, was launched in April 2020, in partnership with Lankan Angel Network (LAN). Notable startups across segments include payment gateway Payhere which has the largest customer base in the ecosystem with more than 1600 active merchants, and Helios, a peer-to-peer lending platform which raised a second round of funding from the John Keells X Accelerator in 2019.

Reasons to Move Your Startup to Sri Lanka

COVID-19 Policy

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka announced a LKR 50 billion refinancing facility for banks, enabling them to expand their lending capacity by LKR 400 billion and provide working capital loans to businesses at a reduced rate of 4 percent.

Focus on tech

The Sri Lankan government introduced 0 percent tax on IT companies. Spiralation is a government-run funding program that offers seed capital to early- stage tech startups with 70 companies funded to date.. Orion City, the largest IT park in Sri Lanka, houses tech startups alongside heavyweights such as Virtusa and Pearson.

Ideal mix of growth and talent

Sri Lanka’s startup ecosystem value has more than doubled from LKR 5.4 billion to LKR 11.2 billion in the past year. The country ranks #1 for Affordable Talent in the Asia Pacific region.

Selected Startup Organizations

Startup Genome Members

MEMBER

Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka

The Information and Communication Technology Agency is the lead agency in Sri Lanka for implementation of information and communications technology initiatives by the Government of Sri Lanka. It was established to develop the economy of Sri Lanka through ICT.

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