About GEN in Sri Lanka

GEN launched its operations in Sri Lanka in 2009, when it partnered with Young Entrepreneurs Sri Lanka to bring the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) campaign to the country. The early campaigns focused on reaching young entrepreneurs and integrating local innovators into international resource networks. These campaigns established a structural partnership for GEN’s work with the island’s entrepreneurial community, which propelled the ecosystem during the years that followed.

During GEW 2010, GEN's Sri Lankan participants earned early recognition on the world stage. Fathuma Nisreen, the founder of Ramsi Fashion—a company designing and manufacturing traditional bags and outfits for Muslim women—was named joint winner of the Youth Business International People's Choice Award, chosen from finalists across the global network.

As the campaign grew through the 2010s, GEN built a coalition of partners that generated awareness of entrepreneurship and its importance for national economic development. In 2022, GEN added the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) as a GEW partner, which took a leading role in coordinating GEW events across the country. That same year, the Lankan Angel Network (LAN) joined GEN's Global Business Angels Network (GBAN), extending the country's ties to GEN's investor community and connecting Sri Lanka's angel investors with peers in dozens of countries.

As GEN deepened its engagement with the government, it named Suresh de Mel, a serial social entrepreneur and longstanding advocate for entrepreneurship, as its GEN lead for Sri Lanka. De Mel, a past chairman and chief executive of the Sri Lanka Export Development Board (EDB), framed GEN's purpose in local terms: “Entrepreneurial ecosystem building is the single most important thing for improving the ease of doing business and creating an enabling environment for sustainable development in Sri Lanka.”

GEN works to connect Sri Lankan founders with international knowledge networks, research, and mentorship while aligning local stakeholders around a shared agenda. Its collaboration with ICTA embedded the GEW campaign within Sri Lanka's national digital-economy targets and drew government agencies, investors, private incubators, and universities into a single coordinated effort. The GEN coalition supporting that agenda is led by a group of ecosystem leaders who include Talal Rafi, Nirmal De Silva, and Anushka Wijesinha.

GEN’s 2024 GEW campaign, organized under the theme “Entrepreneurship is for Everyone,” reached more than 20,000 participants through 207 programs organized by 100 partners across all 25 districts. Coordinated in partnership with ICTA, the campaign was launched at the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce in Colombo by Kanaka Herath, the Minister of State for Technology, who tied it to the country's DIGIECON 2030 initiative. The inclusion of women and youth in science and technology was a defining thread among the more than 20 participating schools and universities. Nevindaree Premarathne, the founder and CEO of The Makers Global, a STEM education company, has organized GEW events in Sri Lanka for many years, reaching young women across schools and universities. Workshops at Edith Cowan University Sri Lanka and the American Corner in Batticaloa featured women entrepreneurs.

Government engagement is a consistent feature of GEN's work in Sri Lanka. Its campaigns have drawn senior ministers: Minister Herath inaugurated GEW and represented Sri Lanka in GEN's Startup Nations policy community. In November 2025, Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya opened GEW at Temple Trees in Colombo, joined by Deputy Minister of Digital Economy Eranga Weeraratne, Deputy Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development Chathuranga Abeysinghe, and Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya, Chief Advisor to the President on Digital Economy and the Chair of ICTA.

GEN supports Sri Lankan founders through its programs. GEN initiated a Startup Huddle chapter in Colombo organized by Unicorn Factory—an entrepreneurship education program founded by Jehan Wijesinghe—in partnership with BMAD, NEST Sri Lanka, and SquareHub. Startup Huddle builds community while supporting founders where early-stage founders receive focused feedback from the community. The Entrepreneurship World Cup (EWC), a global pitch competition GEN launched in 2019, offers Sri Lankan startups the opportunity to receive free training and mentorship while competing for a share of $1 million in prizes. GEN has also carried Sri Lankan founders onto its global stage: Umayanga Nanayakkara of AGC Innovate and Kanishka Weeramunda of DirectPay were among the Sri Lankan entrepreneurs featured at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) in 2023.

GEN maintains relationships with a broad range of Sri Lankan institutions, including ICTA, the Ministry of Digital Economy, the Ministry of Technology, the Ministry of Industries, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the National Enterprise Development Authority, alongside the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and academic partners such as Edith Cowan University Sri Lanka and ESOFT Colombo Metro Campus. The U.S. Embassy and American Center Colombo have worked with GEN in supporting entrepreneurship programming in the country. GEN's campaign has also reached beyond the capital.  For example, the American Corner in Batticaloa ran GEW events for young women entrepreneurs and through a partnership with Villa College in the Maldives.

GEN's Chair of the Board, Jeff Hoffman, has visited Sri Lanka, leading public leadership forums in the country. GEN recognized Sri Lanka's campaign internationally when it nominated ICTA for the 2025 Global Entrepreneurship Week Champion award—given to the strongest national campaign.

The 2025 GEW campaign, themed “Together We Build,” extended across all nine provinces and reflected a widening ambition: to raise Sri Lankan founders' visibility on international platforms and to knit state agencies, academia, and private incubators into a durable national effort aligned with the country's digital-economy goals. With Sri Lanka's campaigns acting as a leader in the GEN global network, and with cross-border ties to neighbors taking shape, GEN's aim in the country remains what it has been since 2009—connecting Sri Lankan founders with the knowledge, networks, capital, and policy support they need to start and scale.