‘Lanka’s IT sector on $ 1 bn path’

M F Jabir

The IT industry brings in approximately $ 430 million of export revenue annually and is now the fifth foreign currency earner of the country, said Jayantha de Silva, IFS Managing Director Sri Lanka and VP South Asia. “We have about 60,000 IT personnel and 300 IT related companies in Sri Lanka,” he said addressing a ceremony held to mark the 15 year presence of IFS in Sri Lanka.

He scoffed at the misconception created by some sections that foreign investors and company’s were hesitant in investing in Sri Lankan.

“More IT company’s have expressed their willingness to start businesses in Sri Lanla,” he said.

“15 years a go the challenges any IT company had was quite different to what it was today. But initially even the IT industry itself was very small in this country. We were about a US $ 30 million industry. But today if you look at it from were we started with 25 personnel and today, 750 we have grown really big and so has the it IT industry in Sri Lanka. And the reason why we came here was many.

“We had options of going to many other countries, but of course we selected Sri Lanka. For any industry the biggest thing is the raw material.

“Raw material in the IT industry is the brains, the intellectual properties available in the country. We analyzed several universities which were there. Even at that time our universities had started to focus on IT were as other countries actually did not have IT related degrees.

“You will be surprised even if you compared India most of the attributes or indicators of Sri Lanka was very much better. But to bring in business there were other things also to consider.

Factors such as doing business easy, nice people, culture and good about the country come under consideration . And of course challenges too. And we were the first direct foreign investment company to come to Sri Lanka. We had a lot of courage to do it. We had lot of expectations and obviously after 15 years we are very happy. As an industry we have set a few tough targets for us. We want to be a US $ one billion industry in 2015.We want to be the largest foreign currency earner by 2020.We wants to have 100,000 IT professionals by 2015. IFS has a big role to play here,” he said.

He said IFS has performed the role of a God Father to other IT companies who were keen in entering the Sri Lankan IT sector. He said IFS never recruited staff from other companies which would have lead to the down fall of such companies. The company always recruited raw graduates from universities and valued ethics in every way.

He said IFS had got involved in the curriculum’s of the state universities which has mutually benefited the company as well as the universities.”

For this purpose we have worked closely with ICTA with the intention of marketing our country abroad. In two large IT events held in the UK we were privileged to have IFS President Alistair Sorbie as the chief speaker on behalf of Sri Lanka which was a great achievement for Sri Lanka and there are 83 companies using IFS Applications in Sri Lanka,” he added.