The Forbes 30 under 30 list is a prestigious list, followed by many that recognises business and industry figures that have revolutionised their fields. This year’s Forbes 30 under 30 list – Media, Marketing and Advertising category – featured two well known Sri Lankans: author, activist and researcher Yudhanjaya Wijeratne and Surge Global Founder and Chief Growth Officer Bhanuka Harischandra.
Speaking to Surge Founder and Chief Growth Officer Bhanuka Harischandra on his thoughts on this achievement, he commented that he received the notification yesterday (20), but added that the list was ambiguous for a while. “The editors had been in touch with me for quite some time. Sri Lanka had a few nominations that went out last year, and I received one as well, so that is how they found out about me and my company Surge Global. Speaking on the reason as to why it’s so interesting that they were nominated, he added: “It’s all pretty exciting. The reason why it’s kind of interesting to us is because of the businesses that are working towards helping global businesses using Sri Lankan talent, and it validates what we’re trying to achieve. It’s a nice little experience for us to know that we’re on the right track.”
We asked him what the journey towards his success was like for him to which he said: “The way this business started out is very interesting. It was essentially now a media technology company, we started off with me and a couple of my friends just playing video games. In our free time, we recorded ourselves playing those games, and we uploaded it to YouTube.” He added that they saw that there was an oppy for them to make money doing what they did. They thought they could turn that into a career but unfortunately for them, YouTube decided to change their policies and that, and if you’re not a business in certain countries, you’re not allowed to participate in the programme, so they got shut down.
During that time, Harischandra added that he was studying biology: “I wasn’t really a good student but I came from a family of doctors, my brother, my mom, my dad, everyone else are from medical backgrounds. And the expectation is you do biology in med school, and you follow that family tree. It didn’t work exactly the way they planned. I ended up flunking my exam and didn’t really pay too much attention to it.”
He explained that the day he got his result was also the day that they found out that YouTube banned them and didn’t let us build what they were building. “We went from a small business that existed between a couple of friends to not existing at all.”
Explaining the way the business model worked earlier, he added that it was a platform that allowed us to generate ad revenue from the content that they put out. “The more views we got, the more money we got paid. And at the peak of the business, this was back in 2016. We were generating about 50 to 60 million views every month, and it had grown up a bit.”
They were running around trying to figure out what to do from there and one of the companies that they were working with came up to them and asked if they could help manage their digital presence and social channels – basically creating content, which is where they saw a niche market that they jumped on. “We changed our business model from getting paid for video game views to actually creating the content for brands. And naturally over time, we moved away from that and started working with businesses, initially in Sri Lanka, but then later, everywhere else around the world, to help them with social media, their content, their advertising, and then into marketing analytics, and a little bit of building out the actual technology now that being used in these businesses.”
Harischandra commented that In 2018, they were acquired by Tavistock, a multibillion dollar private investment organisation owned by the British billionaire Joe Lewis. “We’ve been working together with that team, as well as a couple of businesses across the US, Australia, the UK, and now across the Middle Eastern region. That has been our journey.” It’s been about six years, and they’ve grown for the first five years slowly from a team of two to about 30-40 people.
We asked him for some words of wisdom for anyone that wishes to become an entrepreneur in Sri Lanka to which he commented: “Everyone gives words of encouragement, which is not necessarily how we operate. What we say is make sure that research and data back behind what you’re trying to do and put in the time before you actually embark on something and try something out, because it’s a lot easier when you are prepped than when you just try to do it out of passion.”
