Sri Lankan Technology Provider OKLO Upgrades Ceylon Tea e-Auction into Powerful Digitalised Platform

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, 21 January 2022: The latest milestone in Sri Lanka’s tea auction history, where the Colombo Tea Traders Association (CTTA) upgraded its online platform to a more integrated state-of-the-art e-Auction platform, is spearheaded by OKLO – a leading Sri Lankan technology partner.

OKLO embarked on an R&D project in 2019 to develop a robust and technologically advance Commodity e-Auction platform that would help any industry transform manual outcry auctions into sophisticated online e-Auctions – thereby bringing efficiency and convenience to its stakeholders. OKLO can now customise this core platform to any industry-specific requirements and go live within a short period of time.

More than 70 local and international vendors bid for CTTA’s tender for an integrated, robust, and cutting-edge e-Auction upgrade. Following intense scrutiny over a10-month screening process, OKLO was finally awarded the tender.

Managing Director of OKLO Private Limited Thilanka Withanage states: “I believe OKLO SmartAuction’s success was due to the proven and robust algorithms and technologies powering the auction platform in a sophisticated way, together with the fantastic team at OKLO working towards a common goal. With COVID-19 pandemic pressuring and with no face-to-face meetings, our mission was to launch the first two phases of e-Auction within a short, three month-period but without doing away with the advanced and mandatory features and functions of an enterprise-level national e-Auction platform.”

“The OKLO team rose to take on this national challenge, achieved the go-live date target as originally planned without any changes or postponements, and unveiled the solution to the CTTA.  According to some stakeholders who took part in the first transaction of SmartAuction, CTTA achieved a record-breaking auction speed on the very first sale conducted on it.”

Thilanka further adds: “SmartAuction’s success was also due to our experience and technical know-how in handling a portfolio of enterprise projects of this nature. At OKLO we don’t approach every problem with a tool or an app in mind. Our latest agile practices are definitely one of our core strengths. We see ourselves more as a technology partner and listen and try to understand the problem that our customers are facing, working with them to find the best solution. This is also seen in SmartAuction’s highly customisable architecture. We’re all about finding simple and effective solutions.”

“In this information era we believe better data analytics leads to speedier and better decision-making, thereby improving an organisation’s efficiency and effectiveness. SmartAuction is a secure, cloud-hosted e-Auction platform designed to take advantage of cloud services with high level of auditing and transparency of the overall platform. For us, this is only the beginning!” concludes Thilanka.

Third Party Testimonials:

“I am happy to say OKLO managed to study and cater to the complex and sometimes conflicting requirements of various stakeholders including buyers, brokers and producers, and deliver an e-auction that goes a long way in guaranteeing fair competition where tea is sold at a price based on the merit of its quality alone whilst reducing the cost of participation.  The project’s Go-Live Date was critical to us and although our requirements were demanding, OKLO delivered on time.”

  • Huzefa Akbarally, Director of Akbar Brothers

“In a world of IT companies that push back every time a request for a change or improvements is made, OKLO is a rare gem. They have been welcoming all genuine requests for improvements to the system, having the best interest of the user’s experience at all times. This enabled us to deliver together a system that is cutting-edge and one of a kind.”

  • Ganesh Deivanayagam, Chairman of Eswaran Brothers Exports