Newly appointed Sri Lanka Association of Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM) Chairman, Jeevan Gnanam commenced his tenure with the announcement of an ambitious vision to rapidly grow the country’s IT industry to Rs. 5 billion by 2022.
Speaking to a gathering of Sri Lanka’s most successful IT professionals, Gnanam commended the vital efforts of SLASSCOM and its leadership in laying out a strong foundation for the industry to commence a rapid acceleration in its growth momentum.
“I am fortunate to stand on the shoulders of great men and women who have come before me - from Madu Ratnayake to Mano Sekaram and Arul Sivagananathan to Ruwindhu Peiris, Chris Canekeratne to Tony Weerasinghe. All of them have contributed significantly in their own rights and dared to make a difference.
“I promise to carry this important legacy forward and explore every opportunity for SLASSCOM and the nation to grow. We are fortunate to have some of the brightest and most progressive minds in the country behind SLASSCOM and as a nation, I think we can see that the opportunities are almost palpable, and I believe in my core that our Rs. 5 billion target is achievable by 2022,” Gnanam stated.
Moving forward, he called for the industry to rally around a 5-point agenda focused around developing local capacity for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, building a culture of innovation across the industry, economy and society, supporting start-ups, the promotion of regional integration internationally and locally, and the commencement of selective skilled employment immigration programmes in order to facilitate invaluable knowledge transfers.
“Sri Lanka’s services industry for the longest time has relied on two main pillars of excellence: Software Development and Finance & Accounting. This was primarily possible because of the large number of developers and finance and accounting graduates we had. However, I believe it is imperative that we now shift our mindset to focus on tomorrow’s jobs.
“Particularly with the large number of statisticians Sri Lanka has, I believe with some up-skilling we can create our third pillar of Data Scientists and AI engineers. Similarly, as a chamber, we need to go beyond IT and focus on becoming a chamber of innovation. This year, we include not only Tech or IT related companies but also ones that have a thirst for Innovation,” Gnanam explained. He called for the re-branding of Sri Lanka as a start-up nation, through the implementation of policy reforms to facilitate a more start-up friendly culture so that small tech and fintech companies are incentivised to experiment in a sandbox environment, while encouraging innovations like crowd funding to drive micro investments into the sector.
“While I believe this might make me unpopular, I’m not worried because I’m not here to win a popularity contest. If we want to become like Singapore we need to think like Singaporeans.
In many cases, we simply do not have the skill sets necessary to make this transition within the country, and in such cases when necessary, we must look to importing quality personnel from neighboring countries to help fill these gaps,” he said.