Sri Lanka can be the best in the world offering world class solutions if its talents are harnessed, Different, Co-Founder/CEO Ruwin Perera told the media on the company’s plans to double down on its investment in Sri Lanka through a multi-million dollar investment in its Colombo office last week.
He said Sri Lanka has great talent that need to be tapped to deliver world class products. Different is here to help Sri Lanka harness and create more talent to compete with the rest of the world.
“We are not here to be a small property management company but to change the way people live,” Perera said, adding that Sri Lanka’s talents are no second to the rest of the world. Sri Lanka is not a mere red dot in the global map. Its talents go beyond engineering to operations and businessmen .
Different Technologies, one of Australia’s hottest new startups, backed by AirTree Ventures (Australia’s largest VC firm) and Silicon Valley’s Foundation Capital, recently reaffirmed its commitment to Sri Lanka by doubling down on its investment in the country through a multi-million dollar investment into its Colombo office, making senior personnel hires, and moving key operational functions, including real-time customer management, customer experience, maintenance, and supplier relationships, to the Colombo office.
Different is a full service property management agency that leverages technology and great people to redefine property management in Australia.
“The property management market is valued at AUD 4 billion and is primarily an offline, relationship based industry. Our ambition is to create a US$ 5 billion IT export market in Sri Lanka,” Perera said.
Different Colombo office was launched a few months ago and the team has already 14 employees.
“Different does things, well, differently, by looking at existing industry processes, making them more efficient by keeping things that work well and discarding those that don’t, and then creating tech to automate those tasks that can be done more efficiently by technology than by humans,’’ said Co Founder, Different, Ruwin Perera.
Different, Country Head, Sri Lanka Rukmankan Sivaloganathan said price arbitrage is not a reason why we are here in Sri Lanka.
We see enormous potential for growth in software engineering in sri Lanka to offer best of class solutions to the world.
“I want to help Sri Lanka make great products for the world and that why we have doubled our investment in the country,” he said, adding that the company is also looking to hire a world-class engineering manager to lead the team locally and be the product lead on the ground here.
The team here will continue to grow at this pace to keep up with business growth in Australia, with a launch in Queensland next month and growth in New South Wales and Victoria.
“The increased investment in engineering and operations demonstrates Different’s commitment to harness the best minds in Sri Lanka to build a world class technology company,” Sivaloganathan said.
“For example, the Tenant App allows tenants to take pictures of maintenance issues at the property and send it through to the owner for approval within seconds and then have visibility over the status of this request, whereas previously they’d have to call the property manager, send an email with pictures, and then keep calling to find out the status of their maintenance request,” he said.
Different, Country Head, Sri Lanka, Rukmankan Sivaloganathan went on to say that developing tech to handle the mundane tasks allows Different to hire a talented team of experts to focus on building relationships with and providing value to owners, tenants, and suppliers. “This high touch approach also provides the company with valuable insights into the different stakeholders’ needs, creating a virtuous loop of feedback and new products and services that constantly pushes the envelope on a truly world class property management experience”.
- LF