GOODLIFE X and SLTC sign strategic partnership to build an entrepreneurial future for Sri Lanka

Colombo, Sri Lanka, February 2023 – Sri Lanka’s leading innovation and development catalyst  Good Life X (GLX) recently entered into a partnership with the Sri Lanka Technological Campus (SLTC) to strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem and foster the next generation of innovative thinkers in the country. The partnership comes at a time when the Sri Lankan economy needs a fresh impetus for innovation-led growth, with a focus on regenerative and sustainable business practices. Entrepreneurship, whilst taught in many courses worldwide, demands real-world experiences through successes and failures to understand the realities on the ground and to have a real impact. While students go through entrepreneurship and innovation classes, hands-on action often remains limited. The partnership between GLX and SLTC aims to tackle that, build practical skills among the campus students and prepare them to take on challenges in the real world. The partnership recognizes that innovation requires out-of-the-box thinking, trialing different approaches to problem-solving and most of all, collaboration with fellow peers to unlock ideas within each other. Through the partnership, GLX will bring to SLTC’s City Campus located at TRACE Expert City, unique and innovative approaches to creating scalable impact, and accelerated good growth business models, whilst inspiring new ways of tackling old problems.

This partnership will enable both parties to combine their strengths to tackle social, economic and environmental challenges at the local, regional and global levels, especially around sustainability and climate change. GLX will co-create the incubation efforts of SLTC and contribute to developing SLTC’s interdisciplinary approaches to problem-solving, innovation and entrepreneurship expertise in order to be efficient and current.  GLX will further contribute towards SLTC’s think tank on industry-academia, innovation and research while providing access to SLTC’s academic fraternity for students to engage with programs and activities hosted by GLX.

Good Life X will be based as an onsite innovation sustainability partner within the SLTC City Campus at TRACE Expert City in Colombo. The space will be used to facilitate hands-on experiences connecting the GLX’s methods of innovative community building within SLTC and TRACE Expert City.

Good Life X (GLX), is an innovation and development catalyst, geared to build a new wave of life-enhancing companies in South Asia. GLX provides critical knowledge and expertise to rapidly advance the prospects of startups, SMEs, and investors focusing on regeneration and innovation through their solutions. As the first sector-specific innovation platform in Sri Lanka GLX has developed flexible, renewable and diverse approaches to bridge the gap between the old and the new, creating actual progress in food & agriculture, circular design, wellness and tourism spaces since 2019.

SLTC is Sri Lanka’s only non-state research university which currently offers a wide array of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, in the disciplines of Engineering, Technology, IT & Computing, Business, Science, and Management. In addition to its own wide portfolio of UGC-approved undergraduate programmes, SLTC also offers several undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in collaboration with top-ranked universities in the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Austria, Singapore, India and Vietnam.

Founded in 2015 as the country’s first non-state corporate-backed engineering university, SLTC has redefined the identity and the outlook of the country’s non-state higher education sector with a greater focus on research and innovation. The twin campuses; the residential campus in Padukka and the City Campus based in TRACE Expert City, Colombo, offers students a truly unique combination of learning environments.

SLTC, Director Planning and Operations – Heminda Jayaweera, SLTC – Founder, President and CEO – Ranjith G. Rubasinghe, with Good Life X, Founder and CEO – Randhula de Silva at the signing of the MoU.