Sri Lanka’s rising technology companies might avoid listing themselves on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) once they are fully established, moving to  advanced markets, Serial Entrepreneur Jeevan Gnanam said.

Speaking at a webinar by the International Chamber of Commerce on Saturday (27), the Co-Founder of Hatch said that the future of Sri Lanka is tech companies and that the true global tech companies that might come out of Sri Lanka will probably move to advanced markets where there is more capital available than the CSE.

“We have seen success stories in our ecosystems that go into Singapore and immediately get valuations, much more exit valuations, much better than they would in Sri Lanka,” he said, adding that the recent case of Singer PLC, where the company got a valuation of $ 15 million which is significant for a Sri Lankan company.

He said that there could be tech companies in Sri Lanka who are looking at global opportunities that might skip Sri Lanka and go into markets where there is a lot more funding availability, market capability, etc. 

“The future of Sri Lanka is on tech companies, and whether they are going to be in the CSE is a question. I think the answer is vague, maybe early-stage companies will entre the CSE, yet it needs to be provided with provisions to support’ I think there’s definitely a marketplace for that,”Gnanam said.

Hsenid Business Solutions PLC is the only software stock company listed in PLC along with Telecommunication companies such as Dialog and Sri Lanka Telecom.

Moreover, he noted that work has to be done with the CSE to onboard companies at probably lower cap numbers.

However, he added that CSE is doing an amazing job with the Empower board where SME companies coming in even at $ 200,000-300,000 market cap valuations can start on the CSE. 

Currently, there are three companies on the Empower board of CSE, namely, Alpha Fire Services PLC, EML Consultants PLC, and Chrissworld PLC.