The Lankan Angel Network (LAN) will invest in the start-up – Aniwa.lk, which is reaching out to a large Sinhala.readership.
“Just 10 months after our launch, we are already ranked 85th for Sri Lanka overall on Alexa.com – a website ranking service – as well as being among the top 30 locally operated content sites,” said Aniwa.lk co-founder Anisha Yasaratne.
Launched by Anisha Yasaratne, Nanda Abeysekera and Gehan Dias, Aniwa.lk has benefited greatly in terms of advice and contacts following the investment by LAN. LAN comprises of well-respected people in the local start-up eco-system who have a passion for promoting entrepreneurship, comprising individual investors, venture capitalists, and angel investors.
LAN was launched to bring together the local investor and mentor community and to scale up the start-up ecosystem.
Aniwa.lk publishes 140 articles and videos a month on their website and on their Facebook page, racking up over 8,000,000 page views since launch with more than 625,000 users per month – a number that still continues to grow every month.
More than two-thirds of these visitors engage with the site through smartphones.
Over 84% of Aniwa.lk’s visitors are between 18 and 44 years of age, with as many as 40% being female, an important demographic to note.
The Aniwa.lk Facebook page has also been a huge hit, quickly receiving over 130,000 Page likes, with a weekly Facebook Reach of over 3.8 million and Engagement (including Likes, Comments, Shares, and Clicks) of over 450,000 per week. Video has also been a big success for Aniwa.lk.