Sri Lanka Association of Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM), the national chamber for the knowledge and innovation industry in Sri Lanka, has launched the Product and Platform Council (PPC) mentoring programme, with the goal of helping Sri Lankan companies scale up their operations and establish world class, high value software products that will create demand in international markets.
SLASSCOM’s PPC that brings together experienced industry professionals has been actively engaged in building the product and platform community by uniting individuals and companies in Sri Lanka possessing the talent for creating exceptional technology-based products. SLASSCOM sees the Product and Platform initiative as one that holds the potential to help boost the country’s economy through new investments, whilst bringing global recognition as a destination for product innovation and creation.
Hiran Jayaratna, heading the mentoring program stated “the success stories show that we have an abundance of ideas and talent, which has resulted in the country emerging as a global destination for product engineering. Going forward, what Sri Lanka needs is a supporting framework, policy changes and an ecosystem to help entrepreneurs thrive during the first few years of their journey in scaling up.”
“As such, the mentoring program will create a platform to support this talent and give them the guidance to navigate the route to successfully scale-up their ideas and create high value, innovative, next-generation products which will grab the attention and interest of global markets and investors.”
He further explained that the mentoring programs would help improve skills in all product related disciplines such as product management, product engineering and product marketing and offer participants access to webinars, workshops and Tech-Talks. It will also assist them to build the right product to match market requirements, offer advice on financing, ensure market access and in perfecting the pitch to potential clients. Furthermore, it will create an Ecosystem platform that product companies can leverage for skills, knowledge and networking.
The programme has a total of 12 mentor-mentee one-on-one sessions planned, accounting for one session per month, with a mid-programme and end-programme meet-up with everyone.
The programme’s first cycle kicked off recently, in October 2021. The ultimate vision of the programme is to increase the contribution from software product and platform development to 10% of the total IT exports from Sri Lanka by 2025. This will be achieved by expanding the number of companies engaged in P&P development and elevating existing companies to the next level by scaling up through local and global opportunities. Having set an ambitious target which aims to achieve export earnings of $ 5 billion by 2025 while employing 200,000 and 1000 startups, SLASSCOM’s overall vision through this initiative is to increase the contribution from software product and platform development to contribute in a big way to the IT exports generated from Sri Lanka.
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