Singapore’s fashion startup Zilingo has acquired Sri Lanka’s SaaS startup nCinga in a $15.5 cash and stock deal, the two said today.
nCinga, founded in 2014, offers an IoT platform to enable real-time production monitoring on factory floors and data analytics tools. Its acquisition is one of Sri Lanka’s largest tech exits in recent times, the two said. Zilingo, which has built several pieces of supply chain — manufacturing, logistics, payments, etc for retailers and brands, said it will deploy the Sri Lankan startup’s Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software across its network of 6,000 factories and 75,000 businesses.
Dr Karunaratne also highlighted three important matters which will support the upgrading of all who make a living through the construction industry. Competition with foreign builders: There is a danger of huge foreign construction companies overrunning the Sri Lankan construction industry. These gigantic foreign companies operate with various incentives offered by their own governments. Due to this reason the local construction companies are encountered with a tremendous disadvantage in competing with them.
Any Government runs on a foreign loans or foreign direct investments has to join with the foreign construction companies. Yet, those foreign companies have to join with the local companies with at least minimum 40% work sharing on construction projects. Likewise, all the construction contracts based on local funding should be offered to the local construction companies.
Setup a bank or Infrastructure Development Fund: China Construction Banking Corporation is the second largest bank in the world. This special bank contributed an enormous support to the rapid development of China. Sri Lanka should start such a bank or a fund which can support the construction industry in the form of a development bank immediately. In the last budget speech also there was a proposal mentioning to start a special construction bank like a development bank with the help of the private sector. If such a bank is opened, the capital should be about US dollars 100 million.
Create enough work: The government is the main benefactor for the construction industry. If it stated in a different way, the government is the main single client who provide construction contracts to the construction companies. During the past five years the government work offered to construction companies are very marginal.
The delay or non-payment of the funds for the work carried out for the government was another problem faced by the companies. On the other hand, construction companies face problems by obtaining loans from the commercial banks on high interest rates for construction work and their inability to settle them on time.
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