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Designed and built by Leapset, a California based tech firm whose technology platform is developed exclusively in Sri Lanka, the new lounge is aimed at providing students with an open space for relaxation, brainstorming and tech workshops focused on innovation and is based on similar spaces utilized by leading Silicon Valley-based companies.
“Our vision at the University of Moratuwa is for it to become a globally-recognised knowledge enterprise. What this means is that we must actively strive not only to gather knowledge but also to generate it; to mould job-creators and not just job-seekers. Given that we already produce the most highly sought-after graduates, we are already well on our way to achieving this target,” said Prof. Jayawardena
“However, if we as Sri Lankans wish to escape the middle-income trap and truly rise up as a knowledge economy, then it is imperative that we foster innovation and entrepreneurship among our youth. The creation of this lounge is just one small step but in time I am confident that this initiative and others like it will bring us closer to our goal and maybe the next big innovation will come from here so we are very grateful to Leapset for taking on this project.”
The lounge was built by in the short space of two and a half months following a discussion between University of Moratuwa faculty members and Leapset senior management last October.
“Today Silicon Valley is a cradle of innovation that attracts a massive amount of funding. There are many factors which helped bring the Valley to where it is today but one of them was a strong partnership between the private sector and prominent universities like Stanford and Berkley,” Leapset General Manager Rasika Karunatilake stated.
“We consider the University of Moratuwa to be the Stanford of Sri Lanka and we believe that it will have a crucial role to play in making Sri Lanka a regional technology giant by fostering a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among its students,” Karunatilake added.
Commenting on the significance of such a culture, Karunatilake cited the experiences of many Silicon Valley-based companies, in addition to the more recent emergence of Israel as an IT powerhouse. “The Sri Lankan IT industry is comprised of a workforce of 83,000 that generate approximately $ 700 million in export earnings. Countries like India, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia, all of which have a significant advantage over us in terms of population size, have gone well ahead of us in terms of IT outsourcing and consultancy and we just don’t have the numbers to be able to compete in that area.
“This is why we believe that high-end disruptive product innovation is the only way forward for our industry. We need to think very seriously on the example set by countries like Israel,” Karunatilake emphasised.
With a population of just 8.3 million and an IT workforce of 200,000, the Israeli ICT sector is estimated to have contributed approximately $ 19.9 billion to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the last year. A subsidiary of the Fortune 500 food services multinational, Sysco, Leapset are the creators and developers of the of a Point of Sales (POS) system which is used by a network of over 400,000 restaurants across the United States.
Pix by Lasantha Kumara
