ADVERTORIAL

HNB Assurance renews gold partnership with FCCISL

“Sri Lankan Entrepreneur of the Year 2011” :

HNB Assurance PLC affirmed its partnership with the “Sri Lankan Entrepreneur of the Year 2011” for the second consecutive year as the Gold partner for Young Entrepreneur category at the launch of its 16th annual awards held recently at the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Sri Lanka (FCCISL) Auditorium.

The Entrepreneur Awards organized by the FCCISL celebrate and recognize the rising entrepreneurial spirit of the country under the theme of “Rising above the Rest” and is held regionally and nationally.

The grand national ceremony will be held on November 23 in Colombo.

The event is widely perceived as the single most significant national event that has contributed to uplift the local SME sector.

The annual awards ceremony provides a platform for the country’s small and medium scale enterprising business community to demonstrate its successful contribution to the country’s socio-economic development for the year in review.

Many of its past winners were owners of small-scale business ventures, who have moved onto becoming well reputed, leading business men and women of the country.

Some of their outstanding business performances have put Sri Lanka’s name at the topmost positions in the global business map.

The Sri Lankan Entrepreneur of the Year Awards salute all such dedicated, committed and courageous entrepreneurs of the country who have boldly overcome many obstacles and challenges came in their path to success.

Applications are now being invited from all suitable entrepreneurs of agribusiness, industry, services and trading sectors drawn from small, medium, large and extra large categories of business based on their investments.

Applications can be obtained from the FCCISL Secretariat and Provincial and District Chambers of Commerce located islandwide.

CMO Asia awards Gamika De Silva

Gamika De Silva was awarded the “Young Achiever of the Year” at the CMO Asia Awards for Excellence in Branding and Marketing which was held in Singapore recently.

The CMO Asia is an organization dedicated to promoting a high level of knowledge-exchange between senior CMOs and brand decision makers across industry segments through the creation and enhancement of leadership and networking opportunities.

The prestigious award for “Young Achiever of the Year” is awarded to individuals below the age of 35 who have displayed outstanding marketing skills throughout the early stages of their careers.

Gamika exemplifies this in numerous ways. To start with, the level of success he has achieved at the age of 32 is unparalleled. Senior Manager Marketing for Post Pay and Mobile Broadband at Etisalat Lanka Pvt Limited - he is the youngest person to hold this position. His prolific 13-year career has seen him gain invaluable experience in such esteemed companies as Richard Pieris & Co Ltd and Janashakthi Insurance where he contributed immensely to their annual growth.

Among his several achievements, Gamika successfully handled the Janashakthi IPO (initial public offering) campaign, which was launched at a time when all market indicators for an IPO were negative.

The campaign was successful, as the IPO was four times oversubscribed within a few hours.

The Janashakthi IPO campaign won an Effie award in 2009 at Sri Lankan Effies. Gamika’s vast contribution to Janashakthi was marked by the fact that he was the project head for the team who won ‘Service Brand of the year 2007’ at the SLIM Brand Excellence awards. He also spearheaded the team that walked away with consecutive awards for ‘Turnaround Brand of the Year’ at the SLIM Brand Excellence awards in 2008 and 2009 for the Janashakthi Life Unlimited brand.

At Etisalat, he pioneered the ‘Blackberry for every one’ campaign which won a Silver award at the Effies 2010. The campaign generated a stunning three-digit growth in the volume of sales for Blackberries in 2010.

De Silva is currently the youngest Vice President of the national marketing body of Sri Lanka and is actively involved in developing the marketing fraternity as a whole.

Expolanka-APIIT programme launched

Expolanka Group launched the Expolanka-APIIT Entrepreneurship Incubation Programme, at the APIIT Law School with a keynote address by Aslam Omar on the psyche of the entrepreneur and the spirit to forge ahead with vision.

Powered by Expolanka Group, the aim of the project is to develop an incubator programme under which students and graduates with entrepreneurship qualities will be provided an option to enable them to develop innovative start-up companies that are geared for strong growth.

Under the programme, a series of workshops will be conducted by various experts from the industry on subjects related to start-ups and idea generation. This will provide the students with an exposure to industry best practices and allow the students to network with top managers.

APIIT Lanka CEO Dr Athula Pitigala Arachchi said that entrepreneurship education was becoming popular worldwide not only in business programmes but across all disciplines.

At the end of the training cycle, the participant will be required to develop a business proposal which will be presented to a selection panel consisting of Expolanka’s senior management.

The selection procedure will consist of determining the innovativeness and the commercial value of the initiative. Selection committees will test the plan and will then decide on successful proposals.

Eurocenter enables e-services:

ICTA’s Lanka Gate Project

In a move that is poised to make public service revolutionarily comfortable, the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) awarded the ‘Lanka Gate e-Services Project’ to Eurocenter DDC recently. The undertaking by the Eurocenter DDC is for developing online services at three government institutions, Labour Department, the Motor Traffic Department and the National Transport Medical Institute.

The main objective of Lanka Gate is to deliver e-services to the public through a common portal via service portals, adopting a Virtual Business Transformational approach, ICTA sources said.

The initial phase of this project will consist of enabling e-services at seven selected government institutions. Among these seven institutions where the above-mentioned ICTA-initiated e-service enabling project will be implemented during the first phase, are four Departments, an Institute, a Board and a Bureau.

The Departments are the Labour Department, the Motor Traffic Department, the Immigration and Emigration Department and the Examinations Department. The National Transport Medical Institute, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board and the Foreign Employment Bureau are the other institutions where enabling of e-services will take place during the initial phase.

The Labour Department intends to make comprehensive citizen services related to EPF issues available on-line. This will provide the working public with easy around-the-clock access to EPF related information such as account balance details and refund status details.

The services to be provided by the Motor Traffic Department will assist the public to view vehicle information contained in the Certificate of Registration (CR). Besides viewing the CR or ‘vehicle book,’ the people will be able to reserve online, a vehicle number of their choice (within three series ahead).

This will eliminate the need for the people to wait in long queues.

Most of these services include secure online payments as well.

The National Transport Medical Institute, the authorizing body for issuing medical certificates for heavy vehicle drivers, will provide online facilities to applicants.

This will include the facility of enabling them to register online for medical checkups at a time convenient to them. While this service is simple and easy, it removes the hassle of the heavy vehicle driver spending long hours at the institute premises to obtain medical certificates.

Kent opens branch in Wennappuwa

Kent opened a new branch in Wennappuwa recently. The new branch will showcase professional picture framing, photo – wall, trophies, awards, plaques, business and corporate gifts, photo story book, wedding story book, laser seals and embossers.

The Wennappuwa branch is the 16th branch of the Kent Group.

With the growing demand for their range of products, Kent intends opening four more branches islandwide during this year.