Second Spiralation Demo Day by ICTA showcases 07 impactful Sri Lankan startups

By Hiyal Biyagamage

The second demo day of ICT Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka’s tech startup support program, ‘Spiralation’ was held recently, highlighting seven home-grown startups who have already passed their early stages and have gained traction in the market after graduating from Spiralation. The seven startups, AgXone, Bluechip Technologies Asia, DirectPay, Frammix, Gavesha, SenzMate and ShoutOUT, showcased their journey so far and underlined how their solutions are impacting diverse industries with the help of emerging technologies such as IoT, machine learning, immersive technologies, blockchain and artificial intelligence.

This unique initiative aims to promote, encourage, and support technology-related entrepreneurship and innovation within Sri Lanka. ‘Spiralation’ focuses on supporting new technology entrepreneurs of Sri Lanka. The program includes but is not limited to seed funding, training, networking sessions, encouragement programs, hackathons, and business promotion opportunities to breach market gaps locally and internationally. The main objective of the demo day is to connect startups with Spiralation corporates since ICTA believes that corporate innovation is key to sustaining in the competitive startup space.

Partnered with both public and private organisations of the ecosystem and armed with a high calibre resource panel, Spiralation has had a successful journey, achieving more than 80% success rate of incubated startups so far. Since 2010, Spiralation has supported more than 100 startups across multiple industry verticals such as health, finance, agriculture, education and logistics, providing nearly 1,000 job opportunities. It has been giving exposure to 30+ international markets, and several startups have also made a presence in key international markets.

A vital step to boost local technopreneur

ICTA Senior Manager – Startup Ecosystem Development Nevindaree Premarathne applauded everyone who took part in this initiative, a massive step taken by ICTA to elevate local technopreneurs 12 years ago.

“The first demo day of Spiralation happened last year. With that, we have generated over 25 leads and come out with five success stories. Success stories mean closing business deals, getting approvals from government authorities which were difficult to do in the first place for them and many more. Through Spiralation, we supported the seven startups who are here today by providing financial assistance via seed funding and mentoring, helping them to identify market access opportunities.”

“Spiralation is the national initiative to elevate tech startups in Sri Lanka, and we have so many success stories to share. However, none of this would have been possible if not for the great support system we have around. We have faced numerous difficulties, but we have been able to provide necessary support at crucial times, thanks to both public and private entities and individuals. From mentoring and securing funds to providing free co-working space, these people have helped Spiralation to grow over the last decade. They believed in this program and the impact we created through Spiralation. For that, we thank all of them,” said Premarathne.

She also said that with the help of corporates and the ecosystem, many new opportunities and ventures will be opened up for local startups through Spiralation Demo Day.

Seven impactful startups

Each of the seven start-ups was given five minutes to present their solution to a gathering of eminent personnel from multiple industry verticals. Below are brief descriptions of the start-ups that were present on the second Spiralation Demo Day:

AgXone

AgXone is an agri drone-based solutions provider for agribusinesses to improve their efficiency and sustainability of the business through smart agronomic decisions. Using their aerial image analytic capabilities, AgXone maps a particular field and processes images to provide critical insights, including crop count, identifying pest attacked areas, plucked and unplucked areas, gap analysis and identifying lines ready for harvesting. Through these data, agribusinesses can improve productivity, take deliberate actions and minimise costs.

AgXone says through their solutions, agribusiness companies could reduce their crop loss by 40% by early detection of pest attacked areas. Through yield predictions, companies can forecast sales and plan to manufacture accordingly. Furthermore, AgXone helps companies reduce costs by 50% through the optimum usage of resources such as fertiliser and pesticides. It is a Product-as-a-Service solution where AgXOne develops all predictive analysis models in house. The company has covered more than 400 acres so far.  

Bluechip Technologies Asia

Data is regarded as the new currency or oil. However, Bluechip believes the next frontier of data is the human voice, where voice data is very powerful and valuable. Their product ‘Callerwise’ uses artificial intelligence and analytics for all voice call interactions across multiple channels, enabling organisations to explore customers’ conversations for informed business decision making. It also helps connect various data points throughout the conversation and provides accurate hypotheses with data-supported evidence in any business scenario.

Callerwise can detect frauds, save costs, assist in lead generation and help companies to automate voice conversations using a voice bot. The company currently works with us-based call centre operations company Aircall and plans to form partnerships with Voice Rules, Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

DirectPay

The award-winning fintech startup, DirectPay, works to supporting the economy by providing a complete digital payment ecosystem at reasonable costs, enabling Sri Lanka towards a cashless economy. Businesses utilising DirectPay find it to be one of the most cost-effective, real-time payment modes to monitor daily transactions and reconciliation through the dashboard or merchant app. Payments to suppliers can easily be facilitated with a click of a button through DirectPay’s fund transfers, even if the suppliers hold an account in a different bank.

Similarly, using the DirectPay mobile application - which complies with the BSS (Baseline Security Standards) for mobile applications, customers can make payments with ease, transfer funds by scanning the recipient’s QR code, make seamless payments at checkout, leave tips, split bills and pay merchants in four simple steps – login, scan, enter the amount, confirm. 

DirectPay works with most banks in the country through CEFT and JustPay under the guidelines of the Central Bank. The company is also licensed to operate Lanka QR and support all cards in Sri Lanka. DirectPay, in 33 months, has surpassed transactions worth 8 billion with total revenue of around Rs. 82 million. The company has issued more than 65,000 tokens with total transactions of around 600,000 and more than 27,000 downloads.

Frammix

Frammix provides technology solutions for businesses to deliver a better experience for their customers through immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR). According to Frammix, immersive technologies create distinct experiences by merging the physical world with digital or simulated reality. AR blends computer-generated information into the user’s real environment, while VR uses computer-generated information and replaces the real world with a simulated world. MR is quite similar to AR, where it also blends computer-generated information onto the real-user environment, but the real-user environment changes depending on user interaction.

Thanks to Spiralation, Frammix got a unique opportunity to collaborate with the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the Central Cultural Fund to popularise Sri Lanka’s cultural tourism sector. That is when they virtually reconstructed the ruined heritage sites to their original state using 3D modelling techniques.

Frammix then facilitates people to experience the virtually reconstructed sites through VR technology as Virtual Tours and helps immerse people in these virtual tours. They will be taken back in time while talking them through the heritage site. Currently, the company is in the process of virtually reconstructing the archaeological monuments in the Polonnaruwa quadrangle (Dalada Maluwa). Polonnaruwa Watadageya, Nishshankalatha Pavilion and the Thuparama Image House have been fully reconstructed along with the VR tours.

Gavesha

Gavesha is a highly interactive learning application made for kids. Gavesha’s mission is to prepare kids for the world for a better tomorrow that is filled with advanced technologies. The company believes that it can ignite the thinking engine and nourish creative thoughts via a series of self-experiments without a teacher’s aid. Gavesha has made it very simple for any kid to learn these complex things alone.

The key selling point behind Gavesha is its simplicity. With an easy-to-use IDE and Companion App, the task of coding projects is streamlined thanks to the open-source tech the microcontroller is based on. An abundance of Arduino libraries is available online that are compatible with it. All of which is helping kids learn on the go with examples explained in detail. More than 1000 kids are now using the platform across the country. However, Gavesha wants to reach kids worldwide who love to learn technology.

SenzMate

SenzMate Ltd., is an IoT company that brings out powerful insights from a tremendous amount of data collected in real-time from thousands of sensors installed to serve the purpose of efficient and optimal business operations. The company specialises in Insight Analyst, Enterprise IoT Systems, Cloud Computing and end-to-end Product as a Service. To fit each client’s requirements precisely SenzMate has introduced solutions that have resulted in increased efficiency in operations and have presented innovative ideas to address specific day to day problems around the world which have led to positive outcomes. Their innovative solutions are tailored to fit each client’s requirements precisely.

The services cover end-to-end IoT Stacks, including embedded system developments, IoT Platform Integrations, Big Data Analytics, and User Layer applications. Furthermore, SenzMate focuses on the IoT based intelligence technology Platform called Magma to enable other businesses to bring IoT based Intelligence integrations within their process with the experience we gathered throughout the journey. Currently, SenzMate has deployments in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Dubai, and Malaysia. They are also the first company in Sri Lanka to enable a locally developed EDGE computing platform.

ShoutOUT

ShoutOUT is a customer experience company that helps brands better customer relationships using their tools, from SMS, AI-powered chatbot, and customer loyalty management platform. Their ‘ShoutOUT Loyalty’ platform has four components – loyalty, customer data management, automation and analytics. ShoutOUT Loyalty platform is a future-proof technology solution helping some of the leading brands in Sri Lanka, including Vision Care, P&S and DSI Tyres. 

For these brands, the company has helped to manage over three million customers and generate more than 10 million loyalty points. Their largest project was rolled out with Massy Stores, the biggest Group of companies on the Caribbean Island. ShoutOUT was able to connect 50 partners of the Group into a single platform and built them a unified loyalty solution to cater to customers in five different countries. ShoutOUT managed more than two million customers on a single platform.