Country needs a patriotic dictator

Shirajiv Sirimane

The brains behind the creation of the revolutionary Sinhala and Tamil SMS which is now used in Singapore, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives and voted as the most outstanding IT entrepreneur in the BPO industry, Harsha Purasinghe speaks to ‘Daily News Business’ from the Colombo Hilton.

“Clearing the Eastern Province needs swift follow up action and if the people have the opportunity to watch musical shows, latest Hindi, Tamil and English movies and have supermarkets, pizza huts they will never ever think of fighting another war.”

‘The Lack of law and order is driving away intellectuals to other countries and locals living in the country feel that they are treated as second class citizens due to increasing indiscipline in the country,’ says Microimage creator and CEO, Harsha Purasinghe.

Speaking to Daily News Business at the Colombo Hilton he says that people get frustrated when justice does not prevail in the country. “We used to go to night clubs to enjoy music but have abandoned them since there is uncalled for violence in them,” he said. “Who wants their head banged with a pistol butt for doing nothing?” he asked.

He said that the best way to maintain discipline in the country is to appoint a patriotic dictator for five years and introduce tough laws and implement them without favourism.

He feels that the North-East conflict should be settled through a negotiated settlement and if terrorism continues it has to be wiped out.

Clearing the Eastern Province needs swift follow up action and there should be a permanent money flow mechanism for the people who have been resettled in the area.

“If these people have the opportunity to watch musical shows, latest Hindi, Tamil and English movies and have super markets, pizza huts they will never ever think of fighting another war.”

He commended the Eastern Awakening programme launched by the Government and said their incomes have to increase. He also urged more investors to set up businesses in the Eastern Province.

The creator of Microimage Purasinghe said Ananda College Colombo provided him proper guidance to start his own business and then he turned it around to be a multi million dollar company with businesses links in India, Singapore, the Maldives and ambitious plans to venture into the USA and France soon.

It was at his neighbour’s house that he first came across a computer and after much pestering, his father was good enough to buy Harsha a computer which had to be plugged into the television. “Only thing I could do from this was programming as there was no way to save files,” he recalled.

Later he managed to convince his father again to buy him a more advanced version where a floppy disc was available. It was the master in charge of computer studies at Ananda College that wanted him to start a computer society in school.

“This was very encouraging. At the 1993 Education Fair he displayed several of his software solutions and also for the first time displayed Sinhala fonts.”

Soon after Sala Enterprises gave their society an opening at the Infotel Exhibition. It was here that they received several orders requesting them to provide software solutions. At this time he was given Rs. 100 per

 day for his expenses and soon after delivering their ‘orders’ they managed to earn over 300,000 which was a huge amount during the time.

This was the time Harsha with two other students decided to form Microimage while they were in school.

It was during this time a leading cable manufacturing company wanted them to design a HR solution to their company. “When we designed and forwarded it to them they said that the deadline has elapsed and our labour was in vain,” he said.

However, this episode made him even more determined and diverted his time to come up with globally recognised HR solutions.

As a result today Microimage designs time attendance and payrolls for many companies in Singapore, India and the Maldives and multi million dollar companies in Sri Lanka like Hong Kong Bank, Dialog Telekom, MAS Holdings, Commercial Bank, DFCC, Lanka Bell, Expo Aviation, Cargills and many more.

“It was very ironic to note that the very company that rejected our proposal is one of our customers today,” he said.

After initially doing a project for the ABC radio networks today almost all radio stations including Sirasa, Gold FM, Yes FM, play music via applications designed by Microimage.

One of the most challenging decisions he had to make was to turn down an offer from his uncle to work and study in Canada. “My colleagues were against it so I decided to pursue my business in Sri Lanka and I think I made the correct decision,” he said.

He was also moved by the tsunami and volunteered to do free counselling for a long time despite his busy schedule. It was at one of these workshops I met my wife and my parents too accepted her.

How was the Sinhala and Tamil SMS designed?

I observed that most of the rural people are using their mobiles only for voice as they did not know to type a message in English. That was the time I decided that they too should be given the chance to use SMS and designed the Sinhala and Tamil SMS which was instantly accepted by Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya of Dialog.

Later we provided this software to Airtel India and other operators as well. In addition we also revolutionised the mobile internet by introducing Sinhala and Tamil internet. (Content browser) You can read the Dinamina newspaper on your mobile through applications designed by me.

How do you view the Lankan telecommunication industry?

Sri Lanka has gone a long way in the mobile industry with low tariff charges and value added services while the internet area needs rapid development.

Do you follow politics?

Yes I do but I am very disappointed in them. There is no clear policy and the best example is the BoI. You see heads rolling almost every year and this is bad for the country as investors think there is no stable Government in place. I am also disappointed at the behaviour. They have lost respect for Parliamentary proceedings.

I also feel that Government expenses are far too high and a smaller Cabinet could do better for the country.

With the high literacy rate why couldn’t Sri Lanka become another Bangalore?

I think the main reason for this is that the Government was not focused on the IT sector. They were concentrating on garments and that is why we missed the ‘bus.’

Sri Lanka should now concentrate on niche products such as providing mobile, security and other specialised products.

What would you say is your crowning moment?

It is the winning of the GSM Asian award and subsequently being selected as the top three in the ‘global’ content in Barcelona. I was the only person from a developing country or Asia and had the opportunity to sit with Chairman’s and CEO’s of Google, Nokia, Orange, Vodaphone, Ericcson and many more.

However I was disappointed that most of them did not know where Sri Lanka was. However I was invited by them to open an office in the Silicon Valley and now I am perusing this proposal.

He said that he is now in the process of designing a breakthrough tsunami early warning system which he said would be another world’s first.