This is the era, where all the telecom operators are looking to optimize their business, increase efficiency, reduce cost, provide better customer service and provide new digital services to customers. Founded in 2011, Omobio is one of the companies at its peak with the high demand in digital services; specializing in products for telecom operators.
The company develops software and solutions catering to the IT industry in Sri Lanka. Gradually, from 2011 the company also started focusing on developing telecommunication-based solutions for local and International mobile and fixed line operators. Omobio is currently expanding and setting up software development, implementation and support centers in Bangladesh and Nepal.
The Inception Tale
The company which kicked off in a single office room grew within a short period of time! By the end of a productive first year, it had already expanded into a strong twenty plus team with many successful deployments, which excited customers locally and internationally. Omobio multiplied from a four man-team to a dominant team of more than 160 skilled individuals within just seven years. The company is fully Sri Lankan owned and grew solely based on the success of its business model and dedication of the smart workforce. Currently the company serves more than thirty customers over twenty additional countries.
The company is working very closely with ICT Universities in the country and takes an active role in mentoring undergraduates by offering internships and academic projects. It has recently established its R&D center in NSBM University of Sri Lanka. This R&D center allows undergraduates to conduct their research in new technologies such as AI, ML, Big data and others.
Eclipsing the Initial Challenges and Rising to the Occasion
As a new startup in 2011, the primary challenge was to identify the right solutions to invest the majority of their time that would make the most impact in the market and yield more robust results. With this strong vision, the first few projects which were carefully thought through and implemented did transform into lasting products for the company. This was the key to establish a secure financial stream that made it possible to expand and grow their service. It made them more confident and dedicated to providing a more powerful and life-giving service to their potential customers.
Gradually working their way up, the company entered the domain of telecom core platforms, such as CDMA SMSC and SMS Firewall solutions by around 2013. The quality of work, in-depth technical knowledge, on-time delivery and the flexibility of the team were the success factors of Omobio to grow at the rate of 200–300% year-on-year.
The Journey of Zealous Entrepreneur
CEO of Omobio, Eranga Weeraratne has been the visionary leader and the driving force of this organization. After his graduation in Computer Science and Engineering field, he joined Infotech Limited as an engineer in e-Business, in the early years when the Internet business was starting to thrive. He led the development of OmniBIS, which was the first Sri Lankan portal offering free email and collaboration tools including online calendar, instant messaging, file storage, personal organizer, etc. even before Gmail and Dropbox type services were established. One unique feature of this service was to send and receive emails via SMS.
After that, he was the founding member of the team that established WaveNET; a software development company specialized in telecom-based products and services. WaveNET that started with only three members has now grown into a strong 120+ member team.
In 2012 he took on the responsibilities as the CEO of Omobio Pvt. Ltd. The Omobio team under Eranga’s guidance strives as one towards making a positive impact on the world through innovation products and solutions. He has led the company towards success and won many renowned awards for the Self-Care Application, Customer-Care Application, TEAM – SMS Box platform solutions at the National Best Quality ICT Awards, and many more. This multi awards winning company serves more than twenty plus telecom operators and service providers in more than twenty countries.
Apart from being the CEO/Chairman of Omobio, he has ventured in to many other industries such as a Chairman/Director of eimSky (Pvt) Ltd, Director of Textware (Pvt) Ltd, Chairman/Director of Spiceyaya (Pvt) Ltd, Chairman/Director of Spice Fortress (Pvt) Ltd and Director of E-Lottery Solutions (Pvt) Ltd.
Diversified Solutions
Some of the initial applications of the company were SMS and IVR based voting applications, which were successfully run by many TV channels in Sri Lanka. Another innovative solution in the initial stage of the company was the location-based applications, which were used by enterprise customers to track their sales force effectiveness. The very first transport system tracking solution was also introduced by Omobio to follow the live locations of trains.
The company has successfully introduced many digitization products including Sales Force Automation, Digital Advertising, Customer Care, Loyalty Management and many such applications. This has assisted many telecom operators to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their sales force and services to provide a more powerful service to their customers.
Unique Endeavors
Omobio is proud of their dedicated team of tech wizards, who are capable of developing cutting-edge, challenging solutions effortlessly as a by-product of brainstorming and working together as a team. They support and hold each other accountable to bring out the best results at all times. It is not only well-known for their smart products and solutions, but also for the robust and outstanding quality maintained time after time. The company firmly believes and invests heavily in R&D and even experiments with bleeding edge technologies.
In 2013, Omobio developed the Mobile Self-Care Application, which was the first multi-lingual self-care application in Sri Lanka. This application was recognized at many International ICT and Mobile award competitions. With the development of Mobile Self-care application suite, the company entered into the world of digitization solutions. During its growth-path, in 2017, the company acquired eIMsky Solutions, which is an RF-ID and IoT company. This opened up avenues to expand in to fast-growing IoT industry. eIMsky product line consists of Advance BLOQNET IOT Platform, Smart Office Suite, Smart Laundry, Asset Tracking and Vehicle Tracking solutions.
Evolving Features
The strength of the company lies in the strong partnerships they have built with all their customers, including telecom operators across the globe. The partnerships with all the major telecom operators in Sri Lanka allows the company to get access to mobile networks such as SS7 signaling, 5G or NB-IoT, etc. which will help the company to experiment and develop various new products and solutions. It has obtained this level of access and trust with the telecom operators through the demonstration of technical skills and integrity through the past years.
The current focus of Omobio is mainly towards strong business relationships with telecom operators. However, the digital solutions of Omobio are similarly applicable to all other industries such as banks, insurance, logistics, etc. Therefore, the company will diversify its marketing to other sectors within the next year.
Enlighten Activities of Omobio
New challenges will always motivate people to innovate and be creative. The company regularly brainstorms on new areas to do R&D. The best team players are selected to form a task force to come up with solutions in that domain.
The company also regularly recognizes the extra efforts taken by team members and team members who innovate/create beyond their usual routine role. This is done officially at company award ceremonies and also at monthly meetings. The company firmly believes in team spirit and environment where they can continue to learn by sharing their wins and gaps and helping each other to grow.
Million Dollar Advice from a CEO
“Having a clear vision, persistency and sustainability are the key factors to be successful as an entrepreneur. I have seen some entrepreneurs failing without being able to sustain their business due to over spending or not having a plan of financial requirements. Also, a new comer will have to face some hardship, may be due to the rejection by potential customers or financial constraints, etc. but they should have a good persistency to overcome such hardships to reach their goals. Finally, never get in to the trap of certain investors who will demand unfairly high stake and steal the majority ownership of your product.” –advises CEO, Eranga.
Focused Wide-Ranging Future
Sri Lanka government is planning to open the job market to Indian professionals, which will be an answer to the current shortage of ICT professional in the country. A bi-lateral FTA will help anyway to increase the business between the two countries, Sri Lanka and India. Even though the company is focusing on R&D in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Speech Recognition and Internet of Things (IoT); but they strongly believe these solutions will go hand in hand towards enhancing the features of its products and services.
“We thrived to be the No. 1 choice of any mobile operator or enterprise, in the digital service products and solution domain. These solutions will be AI and ML enabled, which will enable our customers to increasing efficiency, best decision making and reduce cost of service operations.” –says CEO Eranga.
Source :-The 10 Most Admired Companies in Sri Lanka 2018
