99X Technology ranked amongst top 10 chess teams in Sri Lanka

Friday, 6 December 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Company team battles with the best at Mercantile and Govt. Chess Championship 99X Technology takes pride not only in its employees’ technical capabilities but also their additional talents and encourages participation in a variety of events and competitions as a means of honing and fine-tuning these skills. In line with this, a team of chess enthusiasts from the company faced off with the best at the Second Mercantile and Government Services International Rating Chess Championship held last week.

Hosted by the Chess Federation of Sri Lanka at the National Institute of Sports Science from 22 to 25 November, the contest saw nearly 100 participants from over 30 companies give it their all over the four days, making the winning title a hotly contested one. A mere point separated 99X Technology’s team, which was placed seventh in the overall rankings, from the winners, showing the levels of competitiveness within the players. The winning team from Hatton National Bank had a score on par with both SriLankan Airlines and Mobitel, which were placed second and third respectively, as did the teams placed after them, which resulted in a slew of tiebreakers to adjudge the final winner. The tournament featured individual games amongst the participants after which the points accumulated by the top three performers of each team were totaled to decide on the team rankings. The team from 99X Technology consisted of Associate Tech Lead Sameera Gunasinghe, Software Engineers Buddhika Wijesinghe and Jayanga Wagaarachchi, Senior Systems Engineer Hiran Silva and Process/Management Associate Navaka Navaratne. Sameera Gunasinghe also came in seventh in the individual set, the only player from the top eight teams to win a place in the individual open category. 99X Technology, since its inception over a decade ago, has rapidly built itself up to become a leading player in Sri Lanka’s IT/BPO industry. Headquartered in Colombo with offices in Oslo, Norway, the company specialises in delivering high-end software products to independent software vendors (ISVs) worldwide and has, to date, delivered over 100 high quality commercial software products. As a testament to its best practices and attention towards the development of its workforce, it was placed among the 15 companies named a Great Place To Work® in Sri Lanka this year and cinched an award for talent management at the fourth Asia’s Best Employer Brand Awards 2013 in Singapore, amongst many other accolades.