Sri Lanka has been on a journey towards digitalisation for several years, and the Founder and CEO of WSO2 Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana believes the country is doing well with there being room for improvement.
While expressing appreciation for the rate of digital adoption in Sri Lanka on a recent edition of LMD’s digital TV show, he added that digitalisation should be viewed from an economic perspective.
“Digital needs to be more cost-effective than non-digital,” he asserted, and explained that it is more expensive for local corporates to go digital: “In Sri Lanka, the cost of people is still sufficiently low so the investment companies are willing to make in digital is relatively lower than in countries where salary compensation is higher.”
Weerawarana highlighted that digitalisation also means empowerment in terms of gaining knowledge: “Knowledge acquisition is no longer hindered by where you are; it is only hindered by whether you want to learn or not.”
“If I want to learn about non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the latest hot topic such as ChatGPT or deep learning, I have the same access [to it] that somebody in California has,” he added.
He sees immense potential for ICT-related exports but mentioned that Sri Lanka should go beyond service exports. “We need to forget about saying we need to create more and more people [in IT],” he asserted, pointing out that IT solutions are the solution.
Elaborating on this, he noted: “We need to identify business problems for which we can create fantastic world-class solutions [and] sell them as products. Sri Lanka is too small so we have to sell products globally to be an effective software producing country.”
And he expounded on the need to empower individuals: “Facebook didn’t come from the US. It came from a small group of individuals who had an idea to change people’s lives, change technology and create something new.”
“It’s not a country strategy that brought ChatGPT, Twitter or LinkedIn,” he pointed out, stating that “the country had an environment that allowed people to create this way but fundamentally, it was individuals who created those ideas and took them to the world.”
The Founder and CEO of WSO2 is optimistic that Sri Lankans can pursue global opportunities: “It’s about facilitating individual entrepreneurs who have a vision, creative thinking, passion, skill and capacity, and finding the necessary resources.”
According to Weerawarana, looking at the local market, the region and then the world doesn’t create “a billion-dollar software business.” He urged individual entrepreneurs to think about how to create a product that will be the best in the world in the niche they are catering to.
He also stressed the importance of finding investors who are willing to back the entrepreneur – and the need for them not to treat entrepreneurs as failures if things go wrong initially.
“In Sri Lanka unfortunately, the mindset is ‘if you lose my money once, I’m going to make sure you never raise money anywhere else.’ And in many places, they ask for unreasonable collateral. You can’t do innovative product creation without being able to risk money,” he argued.
And he explained that “we need to build a culture for failure,” adding that successful entrepreneurs should also be encouraged to help mentor and drive new entrepreneurs.
Weerawarana is passionate about Sri Lanka’s potential – especially given the eastward trend that’s taking place in the world: “Ours is a great country. We have problems of course, but we [also have] the location, environment, people, culture and values that are incredibly powerful and unique in the world.”
He called on Sri Lankans to “think generationally” and not for the next year or five years.
“Only [if we] start thinking generationally, [will we] make the changes that will drive Sri Lanka to a better place,” he concluded, adding that if we want to make Sri Lanka better, we must begin by changing ourselves.
