Wiley Principal Sponsor for SLASSCOM Ingenuity Awards 2021

Wiley Sri Lanka General Manager Bimal Gunapala (left) and SLASSCOM Board Member Haridhu Abeygoonaratne signing the sponsorship agreement of Ingenuity Awards 2021

Global leader in research and education, Wiley, will join Sri Lanka Association of Software & Service Companies (SLASSCOM) as Principal Sponsor for the third installment of Ingenuity Awards to be held on 30 March at Shangri-La Colombo. The event is hosted with the objective of promoting entrepreneurship and innovation in Sri Lanka across different industrial disciplines.

Ingenuity is the influx of ideas that allows a business to flourish; this enables businesses to scale, stand out, provide solutions to customer problems and enhance capabilities of the human resource or workforce. As the facilitator and catalyst for growth for the Sri Lankan IT and BPM industry, SLASSCOM deems Ingenuity Awards as an opportunity to incentivise and boost the country’s innovation drive.

Commenting on Ingenuity Awards, Wiley Sri Lanka General Manager Bimal Gunapala said: “We are excited to support the Sri Lankan IT and BPM industry via this sponsorship. Though established fairly recently, we have a great relationship with SLASSCOM and we find their passion for innovation and ingenuity to be in line with ours at John Wiley. We congratulate SLASSCOM for managing to organise this event for the third time despite challenges presented by the pandemic and all participants for coming forward with their innovative product and solutions. We are looking forward to the Grand Finale.”

Meanwhile, SLASSCOM Chairman Channa Manoharan commended Wiley for coming forward to recognise and reward ingenuity: “We are delighted to have a global brand such as Wiley, as the principal sponsor of the SLASSCOM National Ingenuity Awards this year. This is an annual entrepreneurship and innovation competition aimed at identifying and awarding innovators regionally and nationally. Over the past the awards has inspired many innovators aimed at solving the pressing problems; we look forward to continuing this and contributing to the industry goal of facilitating 1,000 startups by 2025.”

Award Categories for Ingenuity Awards 2021are Best Product Innovation, Best Disruptor award, Best Client Delivery Solution, Best Innovation in Internal Processes, Best Technology or Framework Innovation, Best Start-up, Best Innovation in Business Process Management, Best Innovative Product Projects – Schools, Best Innovative Product – Universities and Upcoming Women Technoprenuer of the Year.

“I thank Wiley for coming onboard as the Principal Sponsor for SLASSCOM National Ingenuity Awards 2021, and supporting the startup and innovation ecosystem of Sri Lanka,” commented SLASSCOM Board Member Haridhu Abeygoonaratne at the simple ceremony marking the signing of the sponsorship agreement.

This year’s awards ceremony will be carried out as a virtually connected event across five regional locations. The provincial winners of these mini events will be combined to the main event at Shangri-La Colombo through the OBS streaming service. SLASSCOM has an ambitious target for the Sri Lankan IT and BPM sector of $ 5 b in revenue, 200,000 direct jobs and 1,000 IT/BPM startups by 2025. 

Wiley commenced operations in Sri Lanka in 2019 and in a very short time has established exceptional product engineering and operations teams to help drive the world forward through research and education. To date, Wiley Sri Lanka has assembled over 400 highly-skilled technologists and uses top technologies and methodologies in its quest to be the best.