(COLOMBO, LANKAPUVATH) –The platform developed targeting technology startups in Sri Lanka, StartupSL.lk website has exceeded 400 startup registrations as reported by the Information and Communication Technology Agency in Sri Lanka.
This website has been launched with the aim of bringing startups, investors and other professional organizations into a single platform. In order to empower these entrepreneurs, the Finance Ministry has mandated that tenders for all Government software contracts costing less than two million Rupees should be exclusively directed to startups.
This website is maintained and administrated by Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka, according to the guidance given by the Ministry of Technology. The secretary of Ministry of Technology, Jayantha De Silva states that providing new business opportunities and digital infrastructure for these startups is one of the top priority of Ministry of Technology and this program has become a huge support for achieving that. Also there are volunteer organizations collaborating who support this cause. The program head Sachindra Samararathne states that registration in this website is completely offered free for the startup founders and by registering they privileged to get many benefits such as accreditation, partnership opportunities with various professional bodies and organization, special financial schemas, and market access opportunities facilitated by the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka. According to the mandate of Ministry of finance, tenders for all government software contracts costing less than two million Rupees should be exclusively directed to startups registered in this platform and this has been instructed to all secretaries to ministries, secretaries to state ministries, chief secretaries of provincial councils, heads of departments and district secretaries, heads of local government authorities, chairmen of government corporations, statutory boards and chairmen of government owned companies, respectively. The Founder of Digital Pulz (Pvt.) Ltd, KoliyaPulasinghe states that free cloud credits offering they received to fulfill their technology needs was a tremendous support during the pandemic situation. This offering of free AWS cloud credits for startups registered herecarried out by collaborating with Amazon Web Services organization. Also, application for various awards and competitions are facilitated through the same registration of the StartupSL.lk website.
Currently, this website has startups registered under over more than 40 business categories including agri-tech, artificial intelligence, robotics, e-commerce, software and hardware. Visitors of this website are facilitated to search and contact these startups based on business category, startup stage, funding stage and date of registration according to their needs. Various local and foreign parties are using this website for search and contact startups and also using it as a source of information for analyzing startups in Sri Lanka at the moment.
