Entrepreneurship is the backbone of any prosperous nation, and today’s world has so much room for disruption and innovation that it is essentially a playground for entrepreneurs looking to solve problems and reinvent how we live and work. Over the last 10 years or so, Sri Lanka has quietly built its own vibrant tech startup ecosystem.
Entrepreneurs launching startups today have a vast array of resources that they can use to learn and grow; from co-working spaces offering affordable workspaces to accelerator programmes that help you strategise and expand to angel investors ready to fund promising startups.
Spiralation 2021
This ecosystem to help foster entrepreneurs and startups largely began with a single initiative – Spiralation by the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) Sri Lanka. An accelerator programme founded in 2010, the goal of Spiralation is to promote, encourage, and support technology-related entrepreneurship and innovation within Sri Lanka.
Spiralation, which takes place annually, takes its cohorts through a number of workshops on the building blocks of running and growing a startup – from marketing to financing to product building to validation. The programme includes but is not limited to, seed funding, training, networking sessions, encouragement programmes, hackathons, and business promotion opportunities to breach market gaps locally and internationally. Each startup in Spiralation also receives a Rs. 1.5 million grant in seed funding.
Startups who are selected to be part of Spiralation are carefully screened by the ICTA, with each annual cohort of Spiraltion being 20 startups. Applications for Spiralation 2021 are now open and end on 10 May.
The Spiralation Series
Arteculate Asia, Sri Lanka’s window to Asia’s tech and startup landscape, showcasing local and regional entrepreneurial stories, has officially partnered with Spiralation to tell the stories of Spiralation’s 2020 cohort through a sustained digital campaign that launched on 1 May.
Speaking to Brunch, Arteculate Asia Founder Enosh Praveen shared: “Sometimes startups don’t get enough traction and publicity. We’re doing exclusive stories on each of these startups every other day from 1 May, where we speak about one of the Spiralation 2020 startups, introducing them to the startup audience and explaining what they do and how they started.”
Through this digital publicity, Arteculate hopes to provide these new startups with publicity that they can leverage to kickstart their brands’ presence within the startup and consumer spaces.
“At Arteculate, what we usually do is simplify stories and make them easily digestible, giving startups a head start,” Praveen explained. “This campaign gives these new Spiralation startups that head start because we’re essentially simplifying their stories and narrating them to the audience, giving the startups a helping hand. They will then be able to better pitch their story to customers and investors.”
In addition to the stories on the Spiralation startups being released every other day, the team at Arteculate is working with the founders of Spiralation on how to leverage digital platforms and social media to grow their businesses, giving them artwork, social media materials, and direction on what, how, and when to post on social media for maximum impact.
The campaign is not simply limited to text stories on each of the startups. Praveen shared that once all 20 startups have been profiled as part of the Spiralation Series campaign, a longer campaign will commence with weekly Instagram Live discussions with each of the Spiralation 2020 startup founders. These Instagram Live discussions will bring startup founders closer to their audiences, allowing the people behind the startups to be introduced, and brook discussion on how their business started, what made them start it, what motivates them, and why they chose to become entrepreneurs.
“The Spiralation Series is specifically about creating a bigger impact. There are 20 startups in this cohort, ranging from a number of industries, and we’ve already published four of their stories,” Praveen said, adding that because of the nature of the series, even if someone reads one of the startup articles that comes out at some later point, because it is a series, the person will automatically be drawn to look at more articles in the series, and learn about more innovative startups and what they are trying to achieve.
To learn more about the Spiralation 2020 startups please visit the Artecualte Asia website (www.arteculate.asia). Applications for Spiralation 2021 are currently ongoing and end on 10 May. For more information or to apply, please visit the Spiralation website (www.spiralation.com).
