Silmy Ahamed; Chief Executive Officer at ITX360 Pvt Ltd – a fully owned subsidiary of Expolanka Holdings shares insight into building a successful tech company that enables its’ SBUs as well as some of the top corporate businesses in Sri Lanka to accelerate their digital transformation and innovation journey.
Expolanka launched its technology arm; ITX 360 to accelerate growth in a digital world. Ahamed explains that ITX 360 is on the cusp of realizing its global ambitions and as a result, they are now working towards expanding its footprint internationally.
Can you briefly take us through ITX 360’s journey and notable successes thus far?
ITX 360 was originally an internal IT arm of one of the largest logistics companies in Sri Lanka with worldwide operations, EFL. Being a part of an extremely tech-savvy group, ITX 360 made bold moves in leveraging the newest technologies to build seamless and efficient solutions that helped optimize operations and give the group an ahead-ofthe-curve competitive advantage.
Although initially, the goal was to support the various entities of Expolanka Holdings, the ITX 360 team had scaled to a point where it made sense to spin it off as a separate company. In 2016, the company acquired its first customer outside the group, and within a short period, we began to transform many businesses across multiple industry verticals. Today, ITX 360 is ISO certified, and much of our revenue comes from external customers cutting across industries such as banking, finance, insurance, telco, SMB enterprise and the public sector.
Over a short span of six years, we have grown from a small team of 35 to a 150-employee company, implementing some innovative solutions for some of the largest firms in the country.
The internal resources and the best practices we have implemented have helped us win awards locally and regionally for our patented products, and we’ve been recognized by Great Place To Work, as one of the Best Workplaces in Sri Lanka.
What are those ingredients that helped you build a resilient company? How did you build a culture of innovation and resilience at ITX 360?
The majority of our employees are millennials. They are innovative by nature. At ITX 360, we focus on building people, however, we ensure they retain and develop their individuality and uniqueness rather than restricting themselves to a predefined frame or box.
As an organization, we provide them with the necessary guidance, means and tools to thrive in their careers, including access to professional education, skills development, and exposure to the latest trends in the market. Because we believe that if you bring out the best in your teams, they will grow, and the organization will also grow.
Our approach is to understand customer challenges and needs and in turn offer them appropriate solutions that will help them overcome their current as well as future challenges with resilient, and innovative technology.
When it comes to innovative solutions, I have enabled a work atmosphere which encourages the team to be creative in how they deploy their skills, and the flexibility to work in hybrid environments, however, the outcomes and results must be effective and in line with the standards of quality, we want to maintain as a tech champion.
We have developed several winning solutions that we can be proud of as a team. We have a few systems for which we have the patent. One such product is Cargotool, a logistics system and MeetX360, an integrated communication system. We have won international accolades for our Robotic Process Automation solutions that we can customize to satisfy unique customer needs.
ITX 360 has a trove of accumulated domain expertise from serving a large global company like EFL. But on top of that, we have recruited industry experts and professionals who can cater to each segment of the IT services we provide – Robotic Process Automation, ERP solutions, Information Security Solutions, Infrastructure & Networking, ELV Solutions, and others.
Despite all the challenges that we as a nation have faced in the last two years, from Covid-19 to the economic meltdown, the company recorded positive growth in terms of revenue, people and customers, during the previous financial year. As a team we have been resilient, we’ve learned to navigate some of the most challenging times and situations, which we believe will carry us into the future.
What is unique about the solutions you offer? What are the advantages and benefits your solutions can give enterprises?
Our solutions make good business sense for the customers because we do not offer off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all solutions as some global brands do. Instead, we focus on the problem and the best solution, so our customers are guaranteed value for their money and better ROI on tech investments. Every business is unique, and so are the problems and the solutions. This approach keeps us focused on our innovations rather than endorsing a particular brand.
What are your plans for expansion and growth? How will you enable that growth?
Since the launch of ITX 360 as a separate entity, the goal was to expand globally and now is the best time to accelerate our plans. The back-to-back crises of the Covid-19 pandemic and the unfolding economic challenges locally have strengthened the tech industry. At this time, having capabilities and expertise in IT and technology is an invaluable advantage because companies can expand overseas, scale and increase foreign currency earnings.
There is also an opportunity to help local enterprises deploy technology to overcome crises and unlock growth opportunities. Today, Sri Lanka is one of those destinations that has the cheapest and highest literate labour in the IT sector. The potential growth for tech companies is double-digit as IT is a trillion-dollar market globally.
ITX 360 is ready to fast-track its expansion globally, cross-utilizing some of the resources of our group that already have a global footprint. We aim to replicate our suite of solutions used in Sri Lanka, like robotic process automation that has a lot of demand from companies in those countries. We are looking at opening an office in Dubai as it opens the market for many destinations like Europe and Africa, and is an exciting new phase for ITX 360.