Tag: Sri Lanka

Singapore – IPG Mediabrands is a media and marketing solutions company. Interpublic Group has launched a partnership with The Insight Hive (Pvt) Ltd. for the establishment of two new organisations, UM Sri Lanka and Initiative Sri Lanka.

IPG Mediabrands and Insight Hive for UM Sri Lanka, and Initiative Sri Lanka have established a partnership agreement that will be implemented immediately.

The announcement comes following earlier this year’s revelation of new agency debuts in New Zealand and Pakistan. It expands IPG Mediabrands’ footprint in the Asia-Pacific region to 16 countries.

Speaking about the expansion, Leigh Terry, CEO of IPG Mediabrands, said, “The network’s expansion into three new growth markets this year, is not only testament to the strength and vitality of our media agencies and the demand for their services, but it also signals the health and recovery of our industry within the Asia Pacific region. Proof in point, our recent MAGNA global advertising forecast confirms that the Asia Pacific advertising economy grew by +8.2% this year, significantly higher than the global average of +5.5%.”

Meanwhile, speaking about the partnership, Peter Solomon, managing director of IPG Mediabrands Sri Lanka, commented, “This alliance with IPG Mediabrands is a major landmark for us at Insight Hive. We stand at the forefront of representing the UM and Initiative media agencies in Sri Lanka, which will contribute to the evolution of an ecosystem that is founded in our unique experience and market intelligence, coupled with the international scale and standing of the IPG Mediabrands network.”

He added, “We hope to establish new standards in consumer intelligence and effective campaign development targeted at a fast-paced marketplace.”

Sri Lanka – French sporting goods retailer Decathlon has announced that it will indefinitely suspend its retail and e-commerce operations in Sri Lanka by October 30 this year, following import concerns amidst the current social unrest in the country.

Decathlon first operated in the country in October 2018 and has operated two stores, as well as an e-commerce store.

In a Facebook statement, Decathlon said that its production activities in Sri Lanka will continue to operate as normal.

“We would like to thank all of our customers and partners for the good will and support they have shown since we first opened our doors. The welcome reserved for our concept and our products was amazing and we sincerely hope to restart our retail activities in Sri Lanka when circumstances permit,” the company said.

They also added that it will also relocate its production sites and its employees, as well as providing financial and return-to-employment support to its employees moving outside the company.

Decathlon’s suspension of operations in Sri Lanka follows the ongoing economic crisis in the country, with Sri Lanka facing its worst economic crisis since 2019. This resulted in the recent Sri Lankan protests that resulted in the government declaring a state of emergency and the resignation of Mahinda Rajapaksa as the prime minister.

Sri Lanka – Despite the turmoil brought by the new COVID-19 Omicron variant as well as the economic issues the country is facing, Sri Lanka’s advertising scene is set to grow by 16% by 2023, which will be dominated by digital formats. This is according to the latest data from Mediabrands’ MAGNA.

According to the insights, Sri Lanka’s advertising market grew by over 10% in 2021. However, it is feared that this growth forecast might change in the near future amidst economic instability in the country, as well as facing a consumer price inflation crisis.

In other mediums, linear formats will also see some growth this year, though on a smaller scale. Meanwhile, television (+3%) and radio (+5%), and OOH (+13%) will see the strongest growth while print will decline slightly (-5%). 

“2023 will bring continued recovery for most linear ad formats, with the exception of print, but over the long term, we anticipate digital will continue to gain market share at the expense of linear media channels,” the report said in a statement.

As evident across APAC, digital is the backbone of growth, with all digital formats expected to see another year of double-digit growth: video by over 52%, social by over 25%, search by over 21%, and display by over 18%. In total, digital advertising revenues will reach US$131m, or a 37% market share regionally.

Singapore – Digital payments company Pomelo Pay (Pomelo), which has its regional HQ in Singapore, has announced a partnership with Dialog Axiata (Dialog), Sri Lanka’s premier telco, to consolidate and provide an enhanced payment platform for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Sri Lanka, helping them to digitalise and accept payments.

The partnership is in line with Pomelo’s plans to expand its global presence in Asia and Europe and will consolidate about 80,000 SME merchants across Dialog’s multiple platforms, including ezCash into a common payment platform Genie. These merchants will be able to send and receive payments securely and seamlessly via QR codes and track all their transactions within the same payment interface via their mobile or online.

The programme also goes in line with Dialog’s mission to champion financial inclusion for over 1 million businesses in Sri Lanka. SMEs in Sri Lanka account for more than 75% of the total number of enterprises attributing to 45% of employment and 52% of the country’s GDP, according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Commerce in Sri Lanka. 

Vincent Choi, CEO of Pomelo, said, “SMEs in South and Southeast Asia face massive challenges in digitalising and accepting digital payments, and we believe that Pomelo can aid growth and adoption in these markets. We are honoured to collaborate with Dialog in their mission to champion financial inclusion in Sri Lanka by empowering over one million merchants with solutions to digitalise, as the country works towards a cashless society.”

Pomelo believes its entry into Sri Lanka is timely, where the firm’s enhanced payment platform will integrate with the national LANKAQR standard which will allow Dialog to offer its merchants a low-cost and seamless digital payment methods to opt for over traditional Point-of-Sales (POS) terminals. 

in October 2020, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) introduced LANKAQR as a way for merchants, particularly SMEs, to initiate and accept payments using mobile devices.

Commenting on this partnership, Renuka Fernando, group chief digital services officer of Dialog Axiata, added, “We are excited to partner with Pomelo who has expertise in providing seamless and intuitive solutions to merchants globally. As Sri Lanka works towards a cashless society, Dialog is committed to empower and enrich Sri Lankan lives and businesses with accessible, inclusive and convenient digital solutions.”

Sri Lanka – Sri Lanka’s online payment gateway solution provider, WEBXPAY, has partnered with global payments company Visa to expand the scope of the country’s digital economy by enabling seamless, effortless, and sustainable digital payment acceptance solutions for SMBs across Sri Lanka. 

The partnership provides WEBXPAY with a boost to faster achieve its goal of empowering SMBs island-wide with face-to-face digital payment acceptance capability, offering them access to Visa cardholders across the globe. This in turn will increase scalability for the small business sector and consequently aid its recovery.

As a new member of the Visa Acceptance Fast Track Programme for APAC, WEBXPAY hopes to widen its net of financial inclusion by enabling digital payment acceptance to 10,000 new-to-digital Sri Lankan SMBs by 2025, aiming for a Gross Merchant Volume (GMV) of Rs 10 billion by 2025 to elevate the country’s digital economy. This will help increase contactless payment acceptance through soft POS, enable tap-to-phone payments with soft POS technology and bring about low-cost face-to-face transaction acceptance. In a post-pandemic economy, this will also help merchants rebuild and increase sales to more consumers and improve customer loyalty; all while offering their shoppers a friction-free digital payment experience at checkout.

Avanthi Colombage, Visa’s country manager for Sri Lanka and the Maldives, shared that small businesses have always been keen to adopt technology to further their business and most times, only need enablers to accelerate this. 

“Through the Visa Acceptance Fast Track Programme, we are excited to partner with WEBXPAY and play a role in helping thousands of small businesses across Sri Lanka go digital. With Visa’s solutions and best practices and WEBXPAY’s superior payment gateway solutions, small businesses can now accept contactless payments and enable tap-to-phone for merchants quicker and in a secure manner, in their path to recovery,” said Colombage.

Meanwhile, Omar Sahib, WEBXPAY’s founder, commented that they appreciate the support extended by Visa to help expand the fintech’s products and social goals in reaching out to the SMBs in Sri Lanka.

“Through this partnership, we are further extending our ability to offer fast, convenient, and frictionless payments processing in the hope that we contribute towards the greater expansion of the local digital payments ecosystem, and in turn play a transformative role in the growth of the digital economy of Sri Lanka,” said Sahib.

Sri Lanka – In 2020, the Sri Lankan advertising market contracted by -9% amid the Coronavirus crisis and political and economic turmoil in the country, where real GDP fell by -3.6%, before recovering by +13% in 2021, according to a global ad market study by Mediabrands’ intel arm MAGNA. In the upcoming year 2022, further growth of +11% is anticipated in the Sri Lankan market, to be driven primarily by digital formats (+26%).

Said sighted growth for the upcoming year is a slight slowdown from 2021 (+13%). Across the APAC region, digital emerged as the backbone of growth, with all digital formats expected to see another year of double-digit growth with +51% for video, +26% social, +23% for search, and +18% for display. In total, digital advertising revenues are expected to reach $140m for the region, or a 36% market share. 

Linear formats will also see some growth in APAC, though on a smaller scale. Television (+5%), radio (+8%), and OOH (+17%) will see the strongest growth in the region, while print is forecasted to decline slightly by -3%. The report noted that 2023 will bring continued recovery for most linear ad formats, again with the exception of print, but over the long term, MAGNA anticipates digital will continue to gain market share at the expense of linear media channels.

In other markets in the South Asia region such as in India and Pakistan, the ad market is also fairly looking up. Indian net ad sales revenue grew +14% in 2021 to reach $8.9b, where growth is expected to accelerate in 2022 to fuel an ad revenue increase of +15%. 

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, linear net advertising revenues are expected to grow by +5% in 2022, a slight slowdown from 2021 growth of +6%. 

Sri Lanka – SLT Mobitel, leading mobile service provider in Sri Lanka, has rebranded and upgraded its current cloud storage service, SLT Storage, to now be called ‘Eazy Storage’. The telco said the enhanced service is in response to the immense potential in the cloud space, and will be offering customers the ultimate cloud solution with a robust and cutting-edge user interface for cloud applications.

SLT Mobitel offers mobile telephony, broadband services, and roaming and idd services, among others. Its cloud storage, file sync, and sharing solution, Eazy Storage, will have no additional broadband costs. Customers have instant access to all data including all files, photos, messages, contacts, and documents in any format to work and share with others, with real-time collaboration from any device, anywhere.

The telco assures all files are secure with powerful on-server and end-to-end encryption. In addition, the solution is hosted inside SLT-MOBITEL’s state-of-the-art data centers.

Eazy Storage packages range from 5GB to 1000 GB and based on customer requests, 1TB can be offered. With prepaid and postpaid options, rates are priced from Rs 50 to Rs. 4675.

SLT Mobitel shared that it will be unveiling new features in the future, including a family sharing option to be launched soon.

Sri Lanka – Through an announcement by the country’s Export Development Board (EDB), Sri Lanka has declared its desire to position itself as the Indian Ocean maritime, logistics, and distribution hub that provides all services and facilities. 

The country’s EDB is officially inviting proposals from eligible marketing agencies, those with public relations skills, where the remit entails developing a national logistics marketing plan and implementing both a digital and non-digital promotion to amplify the country’s logistics sector. 

According to EDB, Sri Lanka boasts a strategic geographic location along the main east-west sea route in the Indian Ocean. It being at the crossroads of the fast growing South Asia region with a proximity to many emerging markets is ideally positioned to be “a very viable hub” in the region. 

Through the commissioned project, Sri Lanka aims to double down on its unique proposition to further develop into a world-class logistics hub that would link global supply chains among a new generation of consumers in the fastest growing economies.

The assignment is slated to last for two years. At the end of the campaign, EDB expects the country’s logistics sector to increase its earnings by 20% within the next five years. 

According to EDB’s guidelines for interested firms’ request for proposal (RFP), part of the scope of work includes identifying different sub-sectors and at least top five key players in each segment that operate within the logistics sector and to address their requirements from a marketing perspective. The work also includes identifying three to five target markets for each segment to be targeted with fitting digital and non-digital strategies.

Marketing agencies are invited to submit their RFP on or before 27 August 2021. The applicants are requested to submit detailed sealed technical proposals and financial proposals separately with a duplicate copy.

The RFP document can be downloaded from the EDB website.

Colombo, Sri Lanka – In line with the institution’s clear focus on the nation’s enterprise development, banking institution Nations Trust Bank (NTB) in Sri Lanka has announced that it has received a US$40m grant from FMO, the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank, to help in the revival and growth of the Bank’s SME portfolio, as well as in order to ensure lives and livelihoods are protected and new employment is created. 

FMO has worked closely with Nations Trust Bank since 2004 and has partnered to provide the bank with access to long-term funding which has become more challenging due to the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

NTB stated that it will focus its funding on local manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, value-added agriculture, women-led businesses, and export-oriented business which in turn will generate the much-needed foreign exchange flow into Sri Lanka and aid in building a resilient national economy. 

According to Priyantha Talwatte, CEO and director at Nations Trust Bank, the loan facility will enable them to support the growth of their SME clients and to provide solutions which are relevant at each stage of the customer’s business lifecycle. He added that it will contribute to narrowing the SME-financing gap and boosting financial inclusion, a vision both shared by FMO and NTB.

“These funds will support the bank’s own ‘Diriya’ program which was floated to support the revival of business with the advent of the pandemic. Our strong and long-standing relationship with FMO has made this facility possible and stands testament to Nations Trust Bank’s continuous ability to transact with international lenders to support local business rebuilding activity,” Talwatte said.

Meanwhile, Marnix Monsfort, director of Financial Institutions at FMO, commented, “FMO is very pleased that we can once again engage with Nations Trust Bank to support them in their strategic journey of supporting SMEs. By contributing to further narrowing the SME-financing gap, NTB can and will boost financial inclusion to various underserved segments, one of the goals highly supported by FMO.”

Aside from this endeavor, NTB has also partnered with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka for the ‘Saubhagya’ business support loan scheme, as well as disbursing over Rs. 20b (US$101.5m) towards the internally generated fund under ‘Nations Diriya’ dedicated to extending financial support to a range of industries engaged in direct or indirect export-oriented business and in local manufacturing.

Colombo, Sri Lanka – YouLead, a program initiated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for better workforce in Sri Lanka, has released a new campaign made in collaboration with dentsu’s digital experience arm Isobar centered around success among the youth.

The campaign narrates the story of the mysterious pond ‘Kalumal Pokuna’ which allows people to magically transform their lives just by drinking from it, and how three teenagers found the hard path to the answer of succeeding in life through the depiction of forest creature voices disturbing their itinerary. YouLead’s campaign teaches its viewers that there are no shortcuts in life, and one must do the hard work in real life in order to succeed.

Furthermore, the campaign wanted to trigger conversations around the need to equip oneself with the necessary tools and knowledge to pursue success and prosperity. YouLead aims to empower the youth to engage in new-found opportunities for skill development such as career guidance and entrepreneurship training made available to today’s youth.

According to Mohenesh Chamith Buthgumwa, director at Isobar Sri Lanka, the campaign was organically successful through the use of astroturfing or guising itself as unsolicited participants in presenting an orchestrated marketing campaign.

“[The campaign] means being bold and ready to take calculated risks along the way. Taking cues from the Hollywood hype machine, we give fans little bits of content every few days. Each element of the promotional campaign has been designed to give it legitimacy, and it even made a group of local treasure hunters team up to go in search of the mythical ‘Kalumal Pokuna’,” Buthgumwa stated.

In a time where it is difficult to tap into digital native youth across rural and urban Sri Lanka, this campaign helped to create a one-of-kind storyline to deliver a timeless message.

“Storytelling is a powerful tool in the digital age. Sri Lankan youth are extremely social media savvy and engaged. We are excited to have launched this unique campaign. We believe that the story of Kalu Mal Pokuna will inspire youth to think outside the box and take a proactive role in deciding their future while pursuing their dreams,” commented Neela Marikkar, chairperson and managing director at Dentsu Grant Group.

The campaign is live on YouTube, and is available in both Sinhala and Tamil languages.