Sri Lankan Online Businesses

I’ve talked about rural businesses for a while, but there are a ton of good businesses in Colombo. I’m personally very interested in the Internet variety. These are a few people doing work online. These are basically the ones I know. I’m not saying use them or don’t use them, but they’re new, geeky ventures and I do support them. I know almost all the people involved personally but I’m not getting paid in any way for this.

LBO (Lanka Business Online)

This is probably the highest quality news source online, though it is a particular niche. It’s not too hard business and it does cover general stuff, but there is an economic focus. I dig the Thrift column and my dad’s Choices column. LBO is also full of multiple, flashing seizure inducing ads and I think that it is one of the few online ventures that is profitable. It is, of course, cross-promoted and supported by a sister TV show.

dailymirror.lk

The Daily Mirror is the most visible and serious of the newspapers online. It also takes an aggressive interest in advertising (including houses) making it, I think, very profitable. I don’t read it too much because most of the story links turn out to be, effectively, Twitter posts but they are doing cool stuff like video interviews and polls and stuff.

WSO2

This is an Open Source ‘SOA’ company run by Sanjiva Weerawarana, formerly of IBM I believe. SOA is apparently Service-Oriented Architecture, some geeky business stuff. All I know is that it’s somehow linked with the Apache software that runs this and every website I’ve ever worked on. This business is cool in that they make a product which they basically give away free and make money through support and consulting.

anything.lk

This is a new venture launched by some friends of mine. There is a huge demand for an online classifieds space in Sri Lanka. I for example am looking for an old iPod shuffle. These guys have set up something to address that need. Personally, I’m not crazy about the interface, but in these things the interface doesn’t matter much. People will use whatever system once it reaches a critical mass. Anything.lk hasn’t reached that mass yet, but they still have listings for most categories. They are also promoting the thing in meatspace and I think they have a shot. I wish them luck.

Vesess

Vesess is a web design company that I’ve worked with extensively. They produce web standards stuff, which is actually incredibly rare among Sri Lankan web designers. They basically subscribe to the global geek ethos, whereas most designers are stuck in the Flash banners and loading pages of 1995. I’ve worked with them to produce everything from the database-driven dialog.lk site (including months of strategy and reorganization) as well as small sites for photographers and small business.

They’ve also recently launched their own web application called CurdBee (for freelancers to manage invoices) which already has a bunch of users, some paying. They do good, international quality work and I recommend them for web design.

And that’s all the Sri Lankan online businesses I know off the top of my head. Tell me if you know any more.

19 Comments

  1. LBO – Thrift column and my dad’s Choices column.
    anything.lk – This is a new venture launched by some friends of mine
    Vesses – I recommend them for web design.

    Bloody hypocrite. Yet i say i am not getting paid in anyway for this.. What are we Indi stupid Samarajiva ? Are we so gullible we don’t see your subtle self promotions ? Hooo Hooo sad ass.

    Don’t plague us with your own self contradictory Monkey praises its own tail stories you fool. Do you hear me? Stop your silly self promotions. We all know the purpose of this cunning post, you just wanted to say MY holy daddy writes for LBO whilst promoting some of my own clan ?

    How cunning ? How subtle ? You should change profession to marketing & advertising. Hypocrite of the Milllenium.

  2. I think all my involvements are fully disclosed. I support any Sri Lankan business, but I generally write about stuff I know. I know the people that run all of these businesses. They also happen to be working online businesses. I write purely from a personal perspective and you can take that for what you will.

  3. It’s nice to see my 1st year project idea being implemented and serving out in the wild :) [I implemented my idea. But I had to do it in ASP.NET]. Yeah I’m talking about anything.lk. I believe that the idea has a market. But everyone should be able to post stuff easily. That will make the service actually usable. And the business model is something else ;) .

    It’s good to see Sri Lankan startups. And we need more of them :).

    http://creately.com/ is also a sri lankan startup that is going really well.

  4. The anything.lk software is a bit wonky in parts, listings won’t open in new tabs for example. It also doesn’t work on mobile. I think they have work to do, but again, with these things critical mass is often more important than the design.

    Didn’t know creately was Sri Lankan, covered by TechCrunch even, cool. I think blinkx.com was also founded by a Sri Lankan and successful.

  5. You forgot topjobs.lk and ticketslk.com. The former should be profitable, dont know about the latter. Someone should actually put down the actual numbers on the table if the online biz need investors.

  8. http://www.thepapare.com is a bit amateurish but has a very loyal and growing fan base. They cater to a niche market with almost zero competition. It has immense potential to grow once they reach a more professional level in future.

  9. http://www.topjobs.lk is one of Sri Lanka’s leading online businesses and probably the only available Software As a Service (SaaS) provider in Sri Lanka with the Internet used as a common platform by job seekers and HR departments of over a 100 leading organisations in the country. As a solution it probably is on par with leading recruitment platforms globally such as Monster, Job Street, Seek, Naukri etc.

    There are also other online businesses here which are far superior to those mentioned in your list.

    The list you have put up makes Sri Lanka’s online businesses look very amateurish and under developed.

  10. A SriLankan product ,OrangeHrm is a good example of Open Source success. OrangeHRM is a world famous Human resource management software. Recently it was among the top 10 sourceforge products, more than 2,75 000 downloads . Dedicated team of individuals in srilanka and US spent considerable amount of time and energy making this product a success. Please help us to spread the news by sending this message to those who know you. You can be proud of being part of a sri lankan OS product. Download it and use it for free.

    http://www.orangehrm.com/

  11. I think Ranga did it for a UK company. I’m not sure if blinkx is his startup. Anyway blinkx has pretty amazing stuff.

  12. Did you guys know that most of the sl radio stations you listen to are run on a Sri lankan built software platform. Checkout http://www.mimobimedia.com. The product won awards locally and regionally. They make a lot of money I think and don’t need any publicity outside of their domain. But I though it could inspire some kids reading it here for the first time.

    It’s a spinoff of a sl software company called microimage

  18. interesting comments as well. Any latest Sri Lankan Job posting website out there?

Comments are closed.