Moratuwa Campus has most submissions at Google Summer of Code
Funds with over US$ 50 billion assets under their management, came together recently for Asia’s biggest angel forum that was brought to Colombo by some ‘local boys’. This happened when Lankan Angel Network (LAN) in 2015 pitched for and beat Malaysia and Singapore when they won the bid to host Asian Business Angels Forum’ (ABAF) in Colombo.
The ABAF, Asia’s sole investor conference with this year’s theme on ‘Cross Border Investing’ saw some high profile global big boys. It was discussed that cross border investments will compound in the island if the authorities take heart to improve start-ups and bring about a culture of entrepreneurship.
Sri Lanka only produces around 8,000 IT graduates annually, Rajan Anandan – Head Google India, noted stressing that the country needed to seriously consider attracting regional and global talent.
Since its inception in 2005, the Google Summer of Code global programme focused on introducing students to open source software development has had the most submissions from Moratuwa University, he said. The programme has brought together 13,000+ student participants and 11,000+ mentors from over 118 countries worldwide.
“Our core capability is the extraordinary and strong software engineering according to these stats,” Mr. Anandan said. He said during the past eight years the world has experienced local talent – local founders built global companies.
“Sri Lanka needs to expand the computer science programmes in universities. Moratuwa University, which is world-famous, shouldn’t restrict itself to an intake of around 100 students and this isn’t enough. Sri Lanka needs to invest further in capacity building,” he said. He stressed on progressive regulations to encourage the start-up eco system. “With this Sri Lanka will be drawing a percentage and incentivizing our start-ups which will go global,” he said. “We can be funding the next WSO2”.