Manoj Ranaweera Posts

Sri Lanka was a British Colony for over 200 years before gaining independence in 1945. As such, institutions large and small followed and continue to follow British standards. But adaptation of these standards in Sri Lanka are continually been influenced by American standards, as more and more people are trained in US universities than in British universities. As an example, I was educated at Royal College in Colombo, the most prominent and the largest school in Sri Lanka with a history of over 150 years. After completing my GCSE Advance Level examinations in 1987, I moved to UK to undertake…

Why is Basel 2 important to Sri Lankan companies? Sri Lanka has set 1 January 2008 as the target date to implement "Basel 2". The key reason for adaptation seems to be the "credit ratings". Like all companies around the globe, Sri Lankan companies do need to borrow for growth (and other reasons) and would like to avoid paying high premium interest rates. Sri Lanka does not seems to have a decent credit scoring system and instead credit officers seem to rely on assessments made with their minds. The state of the mind of the individual at the time of…

Outlook just delivered a comment from Pankaj Shukla about blogging editors and Karan Bilimoria. I had a quick looked at Pankaj’s website, and I find myself another guy who has completed a MBA. I quite like the following he has written: When most of the followings are true (see his article for the full list) then you know that you have completed your MBA: You ask the waiter what the restaurant’s core competencies are. You do not believe in any problems in your life, just issues and improvement opportunities. You can actually use the term value-added without falling down laughing.…

Sri Lanka is currently going through a bad period. Smell of a forthcoming war with LTTE (Tamil Tigers, most ruthless terrorist group in the world) is in the air. Tourism is down. The hotel I am staying in, Trans Asia,  is nearly empty. People are keeping a low profile and keeping away from busy crowded locations. But life and business continues. People in here are used to worst conditions than this. Government is taking all it can to avoid repeat of another war. However, this is having a profound impact on ebdex, which I am trying to address. We have…

I promised to report after attending the excellent and inspiring "talk" given by Lord Karan Bilimoria at Manchester Business School. Karan has gone through similar "pain" that I am going through 15 years or so ago. When Karan started he knew nothing about brewing beer. He had to learn fast. He constantly received "NO" as an answer. It motivated him further to be successfull. Here are the key messages I took home: 1. Make it a global brand – it’s all about brand equity. ebdex was set-up with this in mind.2. Against all odds – Karen had a partner. I…

I have been chatting to Dennis Howlett regarding blogging platforms, as I recently decided to use wordpress as my blogging platform, moving away from Blogger due to less functionality.  Dennis has recently written an excellent article about blogging platforms. He summarises the article by saying…… Geekiness is pretty much a requirement once you get past the no-brainer freebies. Instructions for add-ins like Technorati, FeedBurner and so on are not as clear to end users as they are to geeks. But then it is important to remember that despite the ‘age’ of blog technology (it’s been around for 5 years), it…

I finally decided to settled for this wordpress template. My blog at blogger.com will continue to function until this site is picked up by search engines. I have also invited Suren Kannangara, our CTO and CEO of our strategic technology partner, Affno to join me as a guest author. So please do welcome Suren. Affno is going through significant growth including increasing their activities in UK. I will leave Suren to blog about affno, what interests him and his relationship with ebdex. Update 1: New articles will no longer be published on blogger.com.

 I arrived in Sri Lanka on Monday the 3rd for a fortnight to discuss testing and debugging with our strategic technology partner, Affno. The Etihad flight from Manchester to Abu Dhabi was almost empty, but the flight from Abu Dhabi to Colombo had only 7 spare seats. It was jam packed with Sri Lankans returning home from employment in Abu Dhabi – mainly due to start of the summer holiday season! The heat in the Middle East during summer is unbearably over 40 degrees Celsius. Many families escape the summer all together. Specially the families of expats – I used…

Could not resist not sharing such an interesting cartoon with you.

Karan Bilimoria, Founder of Cobra Beer and TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) UK Board Member is expected to deliver an inspiring lecture at Manchester Business School on 21 June 2006. It was scarcely 15 years ago that Karan Bilimoria made a choice that would change his life forever. Spotting a gap in the beer market between the fizzy lagers and heavy ales that clogged the shelves – and paired poorly with food – Karan came up with an entirely new idea: Cobra. Specially brewed to be smoother and less gassy than regular lagers, Cobra is the perfect accompaniment to all foods…