STAAR (Service Type Autonomous AI based Robotic platform) aims to build customizable service bots for various services like housekeeping, greeting guests, delivering food and baggage etc. They hope to expand to serve a variety of industries.
Guide Me is a real time travel guide app for travelers visiting the pearl of Sri Lanka. It acts like a virtual compass that helps you locate closest attractions, activities, things to do and experience. Along with other useful information such as the closest bank, fuel station, hospital or police station. The app also uses Augmented Reality (AR) to let you discover hotspots during your holiday and in you chosen destination.
Fixar is an online platform which brings together service providers such as plumbers, electricians, gardeners, etc. and connects them with potential customers.
Academia Educational Institute is conducting tuition classes for Local syllabus (English Medium) and London syllabus (Cambridge and Edexcel) students
“GIFTUP” is Sri Lanka’s e-Gift voucher platform for consumers and merchants of small and large scale. Now you can send your loved ones a gift voucher instantly and let them know that you have them in your thoughts. Simply select a merchant, a value for your voucher and type in your loved one’s mobile number or email and send them the gift voucher instantly.
ANANKE is a platform built ground up for the Internet of Things. It provides general API interfaces, IoT-specific development tools and functional capabilities making it easy to develop and deliver powerful IoT solutions.
Global Tutor provides high quality Education utilizing the resources and technology of today’s context which will enhance students’ knowledge and create a community that utilizes the technology to the development of the economy.
PlanMash is the world’s 1st smart wedding planning app to provide the most suitable wedding image board and plan using machine learning together with the most suitable wedding vendors after analysing the preferences of couples.
iStay is an end-to-end digital hospitality solution where guests can order services and communicate easily comprising of a dashboard for the hotel management to track and manage orders.
BringMe is a virtual grocery shopping experience in Sri Lanka with home delivery. We guarantee best quality at the lowest price. More importantly we save your free time plus deliver your grocery requirements to your door step without any delivery fee. We ensure money back guarantee to all our customers as you are more important to us.
An online shopping platform selling premium products. The product categories range from electronics to music and home audio, to gadgets, perfumes, smartphones, books, and fashion as well.
Builderbuy.lk is Sri Lanka’s first online marketplace for the engineering industry connecting material suppliers & contractors
vSHIP is a platform that allows Transport Requesters (Clients) & Transport Service Providers (Transporters) to share assets through aggregation. By doing this, we aim to help increase efficiency, optimize utilization and bring down the cost of transporting products.
BLUE LOTUS 360 is a highly configurable SaaS cloud ERP solution for project, job, batch based industries in construction, Manufacturing, trading and service industry. BL360’s application is built to make it easy to do business across multiple verticals and locations by consolidating and standardizing processes, providing visibility across organization, and help in simplifying compliance in many areas of business such as Accounting and Finance, Human Resource, Inventory, Procurement, Project Management,Quantity surveying etc.
This activity based eLearning platform for grade 5 students was designed for addressing the limitation of traditional methods of class room education system and adapting latest developments of eLearning concepts such as gamification, Micro-Learning etc.
Gihan Cooray was appointed as an Executive Director of JKH in November 2016 and was appointed as Group Finance Director of JKH on January 1st 2018. He is also a Non-Executive Director of Nations Trust Bank PLC. Mr. Cooray holds an MBA from the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University, Houston, Texas. He is an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK, a Certified Management Accountant of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants, Australia and has a Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK. He serves as a Member of the Sub-Committee on Economic, Fiscal and Policy Planning of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.
Krishan Balendra was appointed as an Executive Director of JKH in November 2016 and was appointed as Deputy Chairman of JKH on January 1st 2018. He is also the Chairman of Nations Trust Bank PLC. He was previously the President of the Leisure and Retail Sectors at JKH. Mr. Balendra joined JKH in 2002 as Head of Corporate Finance after stints at UBS Warburg, Hong Kong in Investment Banking and Aitken Spence Sri Lanka in Corporate Finance. Mr. Balendra, a former Chairman of the Colombo Stock Exchange, holds a law degree (LLB) from the University of London and an MBA from INSEAD. He is also the Honorary Consul General of the Republic of Poland in Sri Lanka in addition to being a Member of the Main Committee of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.
“Dumith is Chairman of Asia Securities Holdings (Pvt) Ltd, a leading independent Investment Bank in Sri Lanka which offers Investment Banking, Research, Stock Broking and Wealth Management services to international and domestic institutions, corporates and high net worth individuals. Dumith has two decades of experience in international Investment Banking based in New York and Hong Kong with JPMorgan Chase & Co. (from 1995 until 2007) and Credit Suisse AG (from 2007 until 2013). Until 2013, he was Managing Director and Group Chief Operating Officer for Credit Suisse Asia Pacific. He has worked in roles across Investment Banking, Equities, Venture Capital and Corporate Strategy. Dumith is a Non-Executive Director of the Colombo Stock Exchange, Union Assurance PLC, and Singer (Sri Lanka) PLC and a member of the Economic Policy Steering Committee of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. He also served as Chairman of Lankan Angel Network (LAN) Sri Lanka’s main angel investor organization. He holds a BA in Physics & Economics from Middlebury College in the U.S. and an MBA from Harvard Business School. “
Ajit Gunewardene is the Founder & CEO of Bluestone Capital Private Limited. He was the Deputy Chairman of John Keells Holdings PLC and has been a member of the Board for over 24 years. In addition to this he was the Chairman of Union Assurance PLC a leading life insurance provider in Sri Lanka. He is the Founder Chairman of Digital Mobility Solutions (PVT) Limited (Pick Me) – the leading ride hailing service provider in the Country. He is a member of the Board of SLINTEC, a company established for the development of nanotechnology in Sri Lanka under the auspices of the Ministry of Science and Technology. He has also served as the Chairman of the Colombo Stock Exchange and Nations Trust Bank PLC. Ajit has a degree in Economics and brings over 36 years of management experience.
Ramesh presently leads the Digital and Technology strategy/execution for the John Keells Group, Sri Lanka’s largest listed conglomerate in the Colombo Stock Exchange, as its Executive Vice President/ Group CIO whilst providing leadership for the Group’s IT Consultancy and Services’ Organization, John Keells IT as its CEO. He is a seasoned Digital cum Business Executive, Leader and Strategist, who has provided effective stewardship for many organizations, including premier, blue-chip, conglomerates, working in some of the most competitive markets in the technology industry. He has over 25 years of experience, with 15+ at the C-level, in Sri Lanka, USA and India with an operational footprint covering territories such as USA, Canada, UK, Nordics, Middle East, Australia and emerging markets. He holds to his credit a PhD (Management) from Keisei University, South Korea, MSc(Computer Science) with Phi Kappa Phi Honours from Rochester Institute of Technology, a MBA(General) from Postgraduate Institute of Management, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka; BSc.Eng.(Electronics & Telecommunications) with First class Honours from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.
STAAR (Service Type Autonomous AI based Robotic platform) aims to build customizable service bots for
various services like housekeeping, greeting guests, delivering food and baggage etc. They hope to
expand to serve a variety of industries.
Guide Me is a real time travel guide app for travelers visiting the pearl of Sri Lanka. It acts like a virtual
compass that helps you locate closest attractions, activities, things to do and experience. Along with
other useful information such as the closest bank, fuel station, hospital or police station. The app also
uses Augmented Reality (AR) to let you discover hotspots during your holiday and in you chosen
destination.
Fixar is an online platform which brings together service providers such as plumbers, electricians, gardeners, etc. and connects them with potential customers.
Academia Educational Institute is conducting tuition classes for Local syllabus (English Medium) and London syllabus (Cambridge and Edexcel) students.
“GIFTUP” is Sri Lanka’s e-Gift voucher platform for consumers and merchants of small and large scale. Now you can send your loved ones a gift voucher instantly and let them know that you have them in your thoughts. Simply select a merchant, a value for your voucher and type in your loved one’s mobile number or email and send them the gift voucher instantly.
ANANKE is a platform built ground up for the Internet of Things. It provides general API interfaces, IoT-specific development tools and functional capabilities making it easy to develop and deliver powerful IoT solutions.
Global Tutor provides high quality Education utilizing the resources and technology of today’s context which will enhance students’ knowledge and create a community that utilizes the technology to the development of the economy.
PlanMash is the world’s 1st smart wedding planning app to provide the most suitable wedding image board and plan using machine learning together with the most suitable wedding vendors after analysing the preferences of couples.
BringMe is a virtual grocery shopping experience in Sri Lanka with home delivery. We guarantee best quality at the lowest price. More importantly we save your free time plus deliver your grocery requirements to your door step without any delivery fee. We ensure money back guarantee to all our customers as you are more important to us.
iStay is an end-to-end digital hospitality solution where guests can order services and communicate easily comprising of a dashboard for the hotel management to track and manage orders.
One click lifestyle app for customers to get healthy and affordable meals delivered.
The access point for every households requirement
Introducing a secure and convenient payment option through your mobile phone – Payments made simple.
BotFactory was using their AI bots to automatically reply to routine emails without the user ever having to intervene. The bot uses deep learning to study the incoming emails, label them and then reply with relevant information that exists within the inbox already. If the bot does not have enough data then it won’t reply and instead saves the message as a draft.
Team Grubz was working on the pressing issue of finding a place to eat. Their app uses a smartphone’s GPS to find restaurants around the user that are offering special deals. When the user visits the restaurant, they can show the app to redeem the deal. Restaurant owners can use the platform to create limited time real-time offers that can help them fill tables on slow days.
Synergen had developed a smart ring that uses gestures to control computers and smartphones through bluetooth. Perhaps the most interesting part of the demonstration was realizing that the presenter was controlling the powerpoint presentation using simple gestures of her hands. The team also showed how they responded to an incoming phone call by text message simply with one gesture of their hand.
Markify is a speech-driven, SaaS analytics and data searching service. A manager, for example, can use natural language voice commands to draw up a series of graphs and analytics using the parameters stated in the command. As part of the demo, the platform was used to trawl through product data on Amazon to find out gaps in inventory (a missing colour or size) that would increase sales.
Team Onsbay was dealing with the challenge of finding skilled service professionals for home repair. They developed a platform where service agents list themselves and where homeowners can search for and book someone who would then perform the service. There was also an option for a subscription service for businesses to book a service.
Kart is a mobile app that helps its users navigate supermarkets more efficiently. The user enters a list of shopping items and the app plots the fastest route through the store. The app navigates through the floors using Bluetooth devices attached to the aisles. At checkout, the app displays loyalty card options during payment. The data collected through the app enables stores to plot their layout more efficiently and see which unplanned products are bought most by customers.
Acrux was building a service called Travel Sphere which is a desktop and mobile app that would allow travellers to experience a location in virtual reality before they decide to visit it. They were planning to crowdsource the content, having contributors send in panoramic pictures of the location. Advertisers will pay to have their own content on the platform which users access for free.
Team Jendo started off the proceedings with their product. Jendo was working on a platform to predict cardiovascular health through noninvasive means. They demoed a pulse oximetric probe (basically a clip that attaches to your finger) through which they collected signals from the pulse (pulse plethysmography), sent it to their platform and used it to make inferences on the subject’s health. The team stated that people largely preferred cheap and noninvasive methods to do health checkups. These devices would be sold to clinics and cheaper version to individuals. Patients could get their checkups done at any clinic because their profiles and data were available in the cloud.
nzurely was developing an online insurance agent agregator. They said that there were over 4.5 million insurance covers in the country and that customers were often unsure if they were getting the best deals. Insurance agents would submit quotes to the platform and customers can use the platform to compare different insurance quotes to select the best one. The platform then connects the customer to the agent directly, where the deal can be completed.
NicNac showed off their product which was an on-demand e-butler. Their service allowed users to request anything they want from the app and have it delivered to them through a network of bike delivery people. What NicNac was doing was completely automating the order process using an ‘AI’ that made the service faster and much more scalable. The interface would make it quicker and easier to make orders as well.
I’m an entrepreneur with a tech background, but I have worked more on the business and product side thus it was natural that growth became my field of interest over time. I’m interested in how technology and automation improve business, impacts society and affects the world. I have founded 3 technology companies in both services and product, and have been consulting on growth, sales & marketing automation for various startups and organizations. I moved to South America in 2012 to reinvent myself and restart my own growth process in a new environment. I got involved as a mentor for several small and medium accelerators in the region as working with young entrepreneurs is a wonderful way to share know-how but also grow on a personal and professional level. Most of my time over the past 15 years has been spent in fintech, HR, and media but for the past 2 years, I have been involved in the beauty industry, focusing on the growth of BePretty, which has recently become Latin America’s largest marketplace for beauty services.
I’m a designer, entrepreneur, and former doctor. I’m interested in how Artificial Intelligence can disrupt and improve our experience with death and dying.
For the last twenty years, I’ve worked in media, healthcare, design, marketing, fintech, innovation consulting and Artificial Intelligence. I’ve founded four companies and an NGO pursuing these interests. The latest one, Eternime, is a pioneer in digital immortality and creates digital replicas of people based on their digital footprint. I also speak and mentor frequently at MIT, Singularity University, and other startup programs around the world.
I was born and raised in Romania but I’ve tried to see as much of the world as possible and expose myself to as many culture shocks as possible. I learned Spanish using Tinder in Chile. Ran a full-marathon in North Korea. Survived frog poison with the Matses tribe in the Amazon. Got scared by the Mursi tribe in Ethiopia. Cooked tajine for fishermen in Taghazout, Morocco. The best part of these adventures was meeting some of the most fascinating people on our planet and glimpsing into their lives.
Providing a seamless customer experience in terms of restaurant table reservations, ordering of menu items, splitting of bills and payments, customer reviews and engagements.
“We were fortunate enough to be selected for the John Keells X Accelerator as an idea stage startup and 6 months later we found ourselves growing fast with paying customers! We have been provided with access to mentors with industry knowledge as well as access to the finance and secretarial services at John Keells Holdings and most of all the office space based out of Crescat Boulevard. Much thanks to Wishanth and his team from JKX for supporting us on our journey ”
“JKX is one of the best corporate accelerators for a Sri Lankan startup who wants to grow fast. The program provides support to overcome the many barriers an early stage startup could face such as finding that early adopter, dealing with clients in a formal way and especially to open up doors for that crucial first meeting! The John Keells name, brand, and accessibility allows any startup to have a strong footprint in the market. Highly recommended to give a shot.”
“JKX Accelerator Programme provides a unique opportunity to be surrounded by other ambitious and inspiring entrepreneurs. DirectPay benefited from what is an atmospheric and energetic space, the collaboration and dedicated support which was critical to taking big steps forward to make the business more realistic and viable in the long term. This is certainly a program for serious entrepreneurs interested in learning how to grow successful businesses!”
“John Keells Accelerator program has given us continuous support to grow our business. We also have access to industry experts who are also our mentors to get their valuable opinion on how best we could achieve our KPIs. We have been able to expand our business within a very short period of time!”
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