Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) Sri Lanka 2022 has come to a fruitful close

This year's Global Entrepreneurship Week Sri Lanka was led by the startup ecosystem development SBU at the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) to honour local entrepreneurs all around the island. A group of young, ambitious professionals at ICTA were in charge of partner onboarding and event promotion and orchestrated the whole campaign during the week in a fruitful manner. 

Beginning on November 14th, ICTA organised the GEW Sri Lanka 2022 launch event by bringing together media partners and over 50 partners, including Bugzero as the event's main corporate sponsor, Mr Suresh De Mel the acting managing director of GEN and a few important locals representing entrepreneurship ecosystem to announce a series of forthcoming events available to entrepreneurs of all scales in the non-tech and tech industries. In parallel, a Facebook live stream was broadcast for spectators to watch the launch event, likewise from budding entrepreneurs to large-scale business owners, all were welcome to join the event and share their stories of entrepreneurial ups and downs. 

Fifty-six (56) in-person (physical) events were held across Sri Lanka during GEW, including workshops for 200+ female entrepreneurs and freelancers covered by the Suhuruliya initiative. This programme was developed by ICTA along with the Ministry of Technology, the Ministry of Children and Women's Affairs and META to support the social and economic empowerment of rural women in Sri Lanka through the use of ICT.

Then a TED-talk event called "Challange the Convention" which was organised by Uva startup hubs. This event united its members and approximately 80 attendees to celebrate GEW in a hybrid fashion, and it concluded with a wonderful blend of informativeness and entertainment.

During GEW, UNDP, Citra Lab, and the Vocational Training Authority of Sri Lanka (VTA) connect with young people in the Mannaram and Mulathive districts of the northern province to provide workshops on "Technopreneurship for Social Change."

We had SquareHub onboarded with GEW Sri Lanka, a startup incubator, accelerator, and SME development provider company, to conduct a 3-day residential programme called “Kickstart weekend” for approximately seventy students to help the students to conceptualise ideas, train them how to pitch them to an audience, advice them to play an active role in developing startup culture and making a difference in our country's economy, and given a chance to join a vast global network of passionate, competent, and connected organisers, mentors, and entrepreneurs.

 A community-level activation in Seethawaka, which was another highlighted physical event, happened during the GEW Sri Lanka. This initiative launched at the event included the issuing of incubation offer letters to 30 teams who had applied to SLTC Ventures; a programme for promoting start-ups in the region; establishing the University Student Enterprise as an association registered 

under the companies act; opening the SLTC co-working space to start-ups emerging from the aforementioned SLTC Ventures programme and the members of the Seethawaka; a specially designed financial literacy programme for a selected cohort of 30 micro- and small-sized women entrepreneurs from the region; and a Knowledge Transfer Programme for Advanced Level ICT teachers aimed at upskilling the A/L ICT teachers in the Seethawaka.

Then there was the Global Business Forum for Aspiring Entrepreneurs, hosted by the National Institute of Business Management in Sri Lanka, which included a panel discussion and a quiz. Over 300 young university students aged 17 to 23 attended the event, which was hosted at the NIBM auditorium in Colombo 7. The keynote speakers highlighted how to prevent Sri Lanka's talented people from emigrating and what skill sets are required in the workplace. At the end of the session, the university students received gifts totalling 50,000 LKR from the sponsor Game Street, the market leaders in computer gaming equipment who came on board this event. 

The Digital Investment Summit of the NITC 2022 (DIS)  was also held, as were the finals of the Global Entrepreneurship World Cup (EWC). There were eight (8) startups that presented at the Digital Investment Summit of the NITC 2022 (DIS). These included ChargeNET, a leading innovation and tech solutions provider that designed and developed S. Asia's first electric supecar and Sri Lanka's largest EV charger network; Arimac, a provider of end-to-end digital solutions in mobile and enterprise solutions; and artificial intelligence (AI) startup,   Eduscope; a multi-award winning educational technology firm with a primary focus on redefining lecture capture across all sectors of the education industry,. Directpay, which invented a mobile application that is used as an alternative to paper checks, Jendo Innovations, a team of engineers and doctors who developed a non-invasive system to detect endothelial dysfunction, an early indicator of cardiovascular diseases, and Boardpac, a leading digital board meeting & executive management meeting automation solution used by over 300+ companies and 15000 board members, CXOs, and executive committee members worldwide across 40 countries. And the two finalists, AGC Innovate and Directpay, have been selected to move further in the Global Entrepreneurship World Cup.

The week also featured fifty-five (55) virtual sessions on a wide range of industrial trending topics like personal branding, forging corporate-startup relationships, pathways to entrepreneurship in Japan, bug hunting sessions, entrepreneurship policies and challenges in the digital era, design thinking and business modelling, home gardening, women in leadership, IP-based entrepreneurship, and so on. 

Bug Zero being the main corporate sponsor of the GEW Sri Lanka 2022 campaign had agreed to conduct 5 virtual webinars over the week commencing from Nov 14-20th addressing themes related to bug hunting and cyber security with internal professionals closely doing interactive sessions with the participants. They had covered sessions for five different audiences inclusively sharing their professional skills with high school leavers, Undergraduates, and regional startup hubs, and two more sessions for local and international enablers. The session addressed around 250 audiences through out week.

As part of Global Entrepreneurship Week in Sri Lanka, the ICTA's Technology and Industry Development team organized another virtual internal session in collaboration with the Sri Lankan Professionals Association in Japan (SLPAJ). On November 14, they held the webinar. In his introductory remarks, Sri Lanka's Ambassador to Japan, His Excellency Mr Rodney Perera, emphasised the significance of this event in helping Sri Lanka transition from a traditional to a knowledge-based economy and in fortifying ties between the two countries Sri Lanka and Japan. Mr Sajitha Perera, the past President of the SLPAJ, spoke about how to establish a successful career in Japan, while Mr Ravindra Wijenayake, the Vice President of the Sri Lanka Students Association, spoke about the scholarship options available in Japan. Mr Wiraj De Soysa, President of the Sri Lanka Automobile Association in Japan, also spoke on his time spent there as a business owner. With 80 people in attendance or more, this weekday programme was a success.

A virtual Digital Investment Summit was held by the Computer Society of Sri Lanka (CSSL) on November 18, The "Digital Investment Summit" is an industry-wide initiative made to facilitate relationships between potential investors and new and developing information and communication technology (ICT) businesses in Sri Lanka. Timed to coincide with Global Entrepreneurship Week, this online workshop had a large turnout. 

The "SHE LEADS - #GEW 2022 TALKS" virtual session was hosted by the Center for Women in Business, IMPACTR, and WOMEN WILL. Twenty or more people attended, making for a lively and interactive event. The main topic during the Event was how to help and encourage women business owners and a session called "Entrepreneurial Policies and Challenges in the Digital Era" was co-hosted by GEN PAKISTAN and GEN SRI LANKA. Participants in the panel discussion were startup facilitators involved in policy targeting startups this had panellists from UK, Canada, Botswana, and Malta.

Likewise over a hundred events in various formats (physical, virtual, and hybrid) were held in the Sri Lankan entrepreneurial ecosystem with the goals of training, encouraging, and broadening involvement, reaching 62 ecosystem partners during GEW.

More than Three thousand (3,000) participants from twelve (12) different regions covering half of the island—including Colombo, Kaluthara, Kandy, Kegalle, Ratnapura, Galle, Hambanthota, Jaffna, Badulla, Monaragala, Anuradhapura, and Batticaloa—took part. Over the course of the week, ICTA has collaborated with partner organizations in eleven (11) countries: Australia, Botswana, Canada, India, Japan, Malta, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Romania to host interactive sessions with local communities.

In spite of this being ICTA's first time hosting GEW, the event has helped to move the country into the top ten (10) in the leaderboard of the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) ranking. ICTA would like to thank all of the officials who helped bring GEW to the local context, particularly Mr Suresh De Mel, the acting director of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, for his guidance throughout the execution of GEW Sri Lanka, and Prof. Malik Ranasinghe, Chairman of ICTA, for his contribution in allowing and facilitating the internal teams to work together inclusively and Mr Sachindra Samaratne the Associate Cheif Digital Economy Officer and Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship Week and GEW organizing crew for leading the campaign ensuring quality from the start.  ICTA is dedicated to pushing GEW Sri Lanka to the next level and is happy to cooperate with more partners who can boast excellent statistics in order to continue their annual run of excellence next year as well.