Author: ManojRanaweera

This is a strange blog post, so please bear with me until I get going. RAW2010, brain child of Mike Perls, the man known simply as “Perls of Wisdom” or the man who would bare all for a publicity stunt, or simply the CEO of MC2, was interested in adding few more speakers of my choice to his celebrity A-list to be heard by the North West’s top 350 entrepreneurs on 20th January 2010. Further to my ramblings on Twitter today, I thought of blogging my top 10 choices. Before that, here is a brief about the event. 20 January…

On behalf of Northern StartUp 2.0‘s StartUpOftheWeek programme, I caught up with Ben Hookway, CEO of Vidiactive to find out about his latest tech startup. Manoj: What made you launch your company? Briefly, tell us about the company history and the management team. Ben: EV Group (previously Enterprise Ventures) were already looking at the Vidiactive project before I came on board. EV had invested in Next Device, a company I had co-founded and sold to Mentor Graphics. I had kept in touch with EV and talked about a few ideas when Vidiactive came up. Having been primarily involved in the…

This week, I caught up with John Bickley to hear about the recent launch of Whamoosh! A new player in the personalisation business. Applying new technology to revolutionise an established market……… Manoj: What made you launch your company? Briefly, tell us about the company history and the management team John: FaceTec (owned by me) has a patented facial recognition personalisation platform which enables a face in an uploaded image to be recognised & automatically (i) extracted and placed in another image (i.e. replacing the face of the character in the recipient image) & (ii) to add assets e.g. face paint,…

Register at http://www.nwstartup20.co.uk/nov09 High growth technology companies go through many phases; in the case of edocr.com, we recognise five phases in our road map; development, commercial trials, launch, growth and dominance. Each phase present a challenge; from many options open, which one (or few) should be pursued to achieve the end market dominance and increase exit multiples. Getting this wrong could result in your business becoming mediocre and loose the competitive advantage it was seeking to establish. We are lucky to have two of the most successful tech entrepreneurs to emerge from the North West over the last decade, sharing…

I just got back from the inaugural event of UK India Business Council Next Gen North West, which Imran Hakim arranged on behalf of the Board on the textile industry at the University of Bolton. The event was well attended, and included some of the hottest names in the textile industry in the north west of England, including Tariq Marfani (Tarameen #850 staff), Neeraj Takiar (Eternity Clothing), Charles Wood (Baltex), Adrian Tracey (Future Textiles), Ashok Kallumpram (Premier Textiles), Andrew Borman (Helston Forensics) and Mark Pedley (Smartlife Technology). Notably absent was Raj Ruia, but he was represented by the General Manager…

The Cabinet of Sri Lanka is as follows: Hon. Ratnasiri Wickremanayake – Prime Minister & Minister of Internal AdministrationHon. Milinda Moragoda – Minister of Justice and Law ReformsHon. Dr. Sarath Amunugama – Minister of Public Administration and Home AffairsHon. Dinesh Gunawardena – Minister of Urban Development and Sacred Area DevelopmentHon. Arumugan Thondaman – Minister of Youth Empowerment & Socio Economic DevelopmentHon. Mahinda Samarasinghe – Minister of Disaster Management and Human RightsHon. Douglas Devananda – Minister of Social Services and Social WelfareHon. Nimal Siripala De Silva – Minister of Healthcare and NutritionHon. Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena – Minister of Cultural AffairsHon. Champika…

Stranded in this spooky town Stoplight is swaying and the phone lines are down Snow is crackling cold She took my heart, I think she took my soul With the moon I run Far from the carnage of the fiery sun Driven by the strangle of vein Showing no mercy I’d do it again Open up your eyes You keep on crying Baby I’ll bleed you dry Skies are blinking at me I see a storm bubbling up from the sea And it’s coming closer And it’s coming closer You shimmy-shook my boat Leaving me stranded all in love on…