Sri Lankan IT-BPO body SLASSCOM is planning on setting up a business incubator by the end of the year so IT students have the ability to access resources and funding to leverage their business ideas into real world start-ups. This was revealed by SLASSCOM member and Ridgecrest Asia Chief Executive Sanath Fernando during his remarks at the recent "Enterprise Summit on Developing People for Growth and Innovation" organised by the British Council.
Described as "both a physical location with real world facilities as well as an environment to fuel idea generation", the incubator would, according to Mr. Fernando, be a permanent commitment by SLASSCOM to mentor entrepreneurial IT students as well as facilitating project trial and error and implementation. Further, it was also suggested that the entrepreneurial eco system created may additionally provide access to funding for students from the Sri Lankan Diaspora.
This incubator project by SLASSCOM was alluded to as being the next step in the ongoing Graduate Enterprise Challenge, which SLASSCOM organises in conjunction with the British Council; a contest that has to date resulted in just one project (a Sinhala-based mobile games development company which currently works with Mobitel) becoming commercially viable, out of 80 participants in 2009.
Commenting on the need for more start-ups, whether successful or otherwise, Mr. Fernando noted that successful entrepreneurs in USA's "Silicon Valley" often failed at multiple start-ups before becoming successful and these failures, in terms of knowledge gained, led to their ultimate success; and, as such, local perceptions of failure had to be redefined to overcome unproductive fears and stigmas associated with failures. |
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