By Pablo Tachil, Head of TMT GCC and Sri Lanka
I’ve spent years travelling across South Asia, and here’s the pattern I keep seeing: the entrepreneurs who move the needle aren’t waiting for perfect conditions. They build through uncertainty, they create jobs, and they solve problems that actually matter to the people around them. That spirit is alive and well in Sri Lanka today, and it’s exactly why I’m bullish on this country’s next chapter.
Here’s the thing, the next phase of Sri Lanka’s growth isn’t going to be written only by its established institutions. It’s also going to be written by founders with the courage to reimagine industries and build markets that don’t exist yet. In the AI era, entrepreneurial capacity isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s economic infrastructure. The stronger and more inclusive that infrastructure is, the more resilient and competitive the whole economy becomes. The real question is whether the ecosystem around them lets them turn technology into enduring value. That takes skills, trusted data, capital, mentorship and collaboration, all evolving together, not in isolation.
That’s the conviction that led us to launch the Salesforce Startup Program in Sri Lanka earlier this year and we did it because we believe in what this entrepreneurial community can become. AI can compress the distance between an idea and its impact dramatically. But let’s be clear-eyed: human ambition is still the engine. Technology is the accelerator. If we get the foundations right – skills, capital, mentorship, trust Sri Lanka’s founders won’t just participate in tomorrow’s economy. They will define it.
