Business

TVS Ntorq 125, the latest 125cc scooter from the TVS Motor Company ,Chennai based manufacturer lunched in Colombo on Wednesday 12  is catering to all age groups specialty the youths while offering something lively and fresh with high tech  to the present generation , officials of the company divulged. 

The also marked the unveiling of an exclusive technology platform TVS Smart X connect , making it Sri Lanka’s first connected scooter, Senior Vice President ,International Business , TVS motor Company R. Dillip said.  TVS Smart X connect is an innovative Blue tooth –enabled technology which is paired to an exclusive NTORQ mobile app which can be down loaded from goggle play store. 

It enables a host of first –in- segment additions to the fully digital speedometer with 55 features including navigation assist, top speed recorder, in- built lap timer, phone, -battery strength display, Cell phone connectivity, last parked location assist, service reminder, trip meter, and multi ride statistic modes, such as street. 

When riding the scooter during traffic jams has been made easy owing to the sharp handling and the light steering of the scooter, flicking the scooter and navigating through traffic is actually easier, Mr Dillip told the BUSINESS Times On the sidelines of the launching ceremony. 

“We have developed an attractive feature rich product for the young scooter buyers in Sri Lanka , he added.  The scooter market in Sri Lanka is on an upswing and is largely driven by the youth of the country. Our latest 125cc offering is a fantastic package of stunning style, smart technology and performance, which will attract this set of young customers," TVS Lanka Pvt. Ltd CEO Ravi Liyanage said. 

TVS NTORQ 125 has been developed based on the TVS Racing pedigree and comes with the state – of –the –art CVTI-REVV 3 Valve engine

Chennai-based TVS Motor Company announced Wednesday the launch of its scooter model TVS NTORQ 125 in Sri Lanka. The 125cc scooter, which will be available in two versions drum and disc brake, is priced at LKR 254,900 and LKR 265,900 (ex-showroom Colombo) respectively, the company said in a statement.

"With the launch of TVS NTORQ 125, we have developed an attractive, feature-rich product for the young scooter buyers in Sri Lanka," TVS Motor Company Senior Vice President, International Business R Dilip said.

The TVS NTORQ 125 is equipped with TVS SmartXonnect, bluetooth-enabled technology which is paired to an exclusive NTORQ mobile App which can be downloaded from Google play store, the company said.

The ‘Colombo Forum’ was signed on 20 September between the New Zealand India Trade Alliance (NZITA) and the New Zealand Sri Lanka Business Council (NZSLBC). The agreement is aimed at increasing trade between the two countries and New Zealand.

Chairman of the NZITA, Mr Giri Gupta says both member organisations are comprised of private sector innovators, entrepreneurs, professionals, and managers: “It makes sense that we work together to expand trade opportunities with the region”.

“There are huge growth opportunities in the region, but it is extremely hard to build the right relationships without assistance and market knowledge”.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, the Chair of New Zealand Sri Lanka Business Council Dr. Lal Senaratne said, “The Colombo Forum will allow both organisations to provide a regular and recognised platform for promotion, innovation, entrepreneurship, and start-ups between India, Sri Lanka and New Zealand”.

“The relationship will promote cooperation and shared information with regard to trade, market development, and services for members of each group. It will make it much easier for New Zealand based companies to expand into the Indian and Sri Lankan markets”, Dr. Lal said.
The agreement covers areas of trade, commerce and industry with a systematic approach to business promotional activity, and participation in exhibitions and trade fairs to be held in New Zealand, Sri Lanka and India. The agreement will make it much easier, for example, for trade delegations to visit both India and Sri Lanka in one trip, and provide a range of business contacts in both countries.

Congratulating the New Zealand Sri Lanka Business Council and the New Zealand India Trade Alliance on signing this agreement, the New Zealand High Commissioner to India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Ambassador to Nepal Her Excellency Joanna Kempkers said, “I was delighted to hear of the plans for closer cooperation between the two business organisations. While the markets of Sri Lanka and India are distinct, there are commonalities that mean this collaboration makes perfect sense. Geography is most obvious in this regard. Many products shipped to India actually transit Colombo port before going on to Mumbai. Sometimes the distributors of a product that New Zealand companies are trying to export will have a licence for the whole South Asian region. And Sri Lanka, with its smaller market of 21m people, can provide a more comfortable testing ground for New Zealand companies looking to springboard in to India. I am confident that the closer links between the two organisations will create synergies for New Zealand business”.

The NZSLBC promotes economic and cultural relations between Sri Lanka and New Zealand. The council consists of business leaders from New Zealand who have both professional and personal experience of business in New Zealand and Sri Lanka.

For the first time in Sri Lanka, a multi-lingual Claims ChatBot had been introduced to insurance industry by Simpleworks Business Solutions Pte Ltd. 

SimpleWorks provides enterprise-class, highly scalable and cost-effective CRM and Artificial Intelligence (AI) based solutions for mid-sized and large enterprises across the Asia Pacific. 

The developer of the ChatBot, SimpleWorks’s officials said that policyholders will now be able to keep abreast of what’s happening with their claim without the hassle of having to reach out to the sales agent or broker or the insurance company’s call centre.

This Chat Bot technology has been first launched in Sri Lanka by Fairfirst Insurance and the company has tiled it as ‘Machan’, which is the first chat bot in the industry that is available in three languages – Sinhala, Tamil and English. Fairfirst Insurance officials said that the new ChatBot is expected to reduce waiting time for claimants, who are now equipped with real time updates available at their fingertips. 

‘Machan’ ChatBot is also capable of having simultaneous conversations with hundreds of people. No matter what time of the day it is or how many people are in contact, every single one of them will be answered immediately. What’s even more impressive is the ability for Fairfirst to continuously improve customer service through analytics and data collection from the ChatBot solution.

SimpleWorks is headquartered in Singapore and operates through its subsidiary in India along with a sales and support office in Sri Lanka.

Gurugram-based Cygnett Hotels & Resorts is planning to set up hotels in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh soon, said a top official.

“Having established our presence in northern and western parts of the country, we are now eyeing overseas markets,” said Sarbendra Sarkar, founder and MD, Cygnett Hotels & Resorts.

“To begin with, we will enter Sri Lanka and Bangladesh before the end of fiscal 2018, followed by South Asia, Middle East, North Africa and the U.S.”

Eyes 1,800 roomsThe first hotel in Bangladesh (Dhaka) would become operational by March 2019, while it might take 18 months in Colombo. Eventually, Cygnett may manage 1,000 rooms in Bangladesh and 600-800 in Sri Lanka.

“Our investments in these properties would be minimal, as we follow asset-light model,” he said. “We help our partners in building these hotels as per our specifications in technology and in running the property.“The promoters have committed to invest about INR 40 crore in Bangladesh and INR 35 crore in Sri Lanka for 100 rooms each. The average per room investment in Bangladesh is INR 40 lakh and INR 35 lakh in Sri Lanka,” he added.

Though Cygnett Hotels has different categories of hotels ranging from from five star to three star, budget and economy, it would offer five star to three star services in Bangladesh, three and four star services in Sri Lanka.

“Three and four star hotels are [a] growing segment in Sri Lanka. We get good number of travellers from India. But, in the case of Bangladesh, we get travellers from China, Japan and India. There are no branded hotels and we can easily fit in,” he said.

Google has unveiled a new search experience making it easier for job seekers in Sri Lanka to find employment opportunities from popular job listing websites, online classifieds and companies.

The new feature is built directly into Google Search to provide a comprehensive listing of jobs across the web. The job search will have hundreds of thousands of job listings from thousands of sites.

Job seekers can now search for “part-time jobs,” “software developer jobs” or similar unique job-seeking queries, to pull out a special module that can be expanded to a more immersive experience. Clicking on any job in this listing opens an at-a-glance view of comprehensive information about the posting such as job title, location, whether it is full-time or part-time, and several other important details - from summaries and links to reviews and ratings of the employer by trusted sources, to the commute between the workplace and home.

The feature will then direct people to the job listing page on the respective website to learn more information or submit their application.

The parent firm of a cable manufacturing company, Sierra Cables EA, has been placed on a watch list by the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) after the company’s auditor raised doubts over the poor performance of its Kenya subsidiary and its local Sri Lankan arm.

Sierra Cables set up its Kenyan business in 2015, but is yet to break even. “The securities of Sierra Cables Plc has been transferred to the watch list with effect from September 7 as the audited financial statements for the financial year ended 31 March 2018 contains an emphasis of matter on going concern pertaining Sierra Cables Plc’s subsidiaries’, Sierra Cable East Africa and Sierra Industries,” said the firm in a regulatory filing seen by the Business Daily.

The parent firm in the regulatory filing linked the troubles of its Kenya subsidiary to huge capital investments in setting up its local factory, which was operationalised last year.

The firm said it earlier secured sufficient orders from Rural Electrification Authority (REA) of Kenya to run the factory profitably, but had been unable to operate at optimum capacity and recover the fixed overhead.

By December 31, 2017, Sierra Cables East Africa had accumulated losses of about Sh10.5 million and its current liabilities exceeded its current assets by Sh56.7 million.

Sierra Cables East Africa CEO Ruwan Fernando said that the firm had introduced new cable products and was banking on the improved political environment to fast track its turnaround.

(Business Daily Africa)

“We are confident about the Kenyan market and the region … 2018 will be better,” he said.

Ceylon Graphite Corp. has announced that it has received the assay results of laboratory testing of graphite samples taken from the overburden of its exploration GRID no 23, under Exploration License No EL/222/R/2 in the Pasyala area in Sri Lanka.

These new site test results indicate a carbon content (Cg) of 96.13% which is vastly superior to virtually every other natural graphite source globally. The laboratory testing was done by the Sri Lanka Government's Geological Survey and Mines Bureau's laboratory. 

Upon these material findings, the company has signed three new land agreements under Exploration Licenses 222 and 224 and is accelerating its exploration, and commencing a drilling program on the recently added site(s) to determine an additional resource estimate, in addition to its currently verified ore holdings. 

"We are delighted with this result which confirms that Ceylon Graphite has some of the world's purest graphite available in its grids," said Bharat Parashar, Chief Executive Officer. "With three active sites at present, we fully expect to bring the new land packages online for commercial extraction over the next several months - as we are now executing on a dual strategy of drilling and clearing out the historical shafts simultaneously."

The new sites contains several historic shafts and adits. The Government of Sri Lanka has granted the company exploration rights in a land package of over 120km² with substantial reserves of the world's  purest graphite.

Graphite mined in Sri Lanka is known to be some of the purest in the world, and currently accounts for less than 1% of the world graphite production.

The Hambantota Port in southern Sri Lanka signed its first Terminal Service Agreement (TSA) with K-Line PTE Limited (KLPL), one of the world's largest maritime transport companies, local media reported on Sunday.

The agreement was signed between Hambantota International Port Group (HIPG) and K-Line PTE Limited, a member of Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd. of Japan, the global giant in transportation.

The TSA was a result of K Line's decision to partner HIPG to improve their throughput via the Hambantota port, as the international standard service delivery levels were consistently achieved and maintained by HIPG, and met with K Line's own levels.

The signing of the TSA is not only a first for HIPG but also a milestone for the Sri Lankan industry as this is the first such agreement to be signed with a maritime tranport operator in the country's history, local media reported.

China Merchants Port Holdings (CM Port) and state-owned Sri Lanka Ports Authority, in last July signed an agreement to manage and run the operations of the Hambantota Port.

Following the signing, the HIPG was set up, which is a joint venture company formed by the Sri Lankan government and CM Port.

The Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment, the leading global professional body for securities, investment, wealth and financial planning professionals with UK headquarters, has relocated to its new office premises in Sri Lanka at 345, R.A De Mel Mawatha, Colombo 03.

The Sri Lanka office functions as the Institute’s international operations centre, providing support to all CISI’s international operations. CISI Sri Lanka is a fully functioning representative office of CISI UK and is comprised of all corresponding business functions including Business Development, HR, Customer Support, Learning and Development, Marketing, Finance and IT departments.

Chairman Sir Alan Yarrow Chartered FCSI said: “Our Colombo team is composed of both highly skilled and highly valued staff. They are a great example of Sri Lanka’s well educated, adaptable workforce and this has helped the successful integration of our London based operating units. We have been able to find sophisticated technical skills resulting in a workforce of extremely skilled professionals delivering professional qualifications.”

The CISI Sri Lankan office predominantly deals with operations for APAC and the Middle East with the call centre servicing members and students throughout the region.

Crystal Martil, Operations Manager and the first ever CISI Sri Lankan staff member said: “When the Institute began its operations in Sri Lanka in 2011, we had only five staff members. Today we have 36 employees and we outgrew our current premises which is why we had to move.

“Almost all UK departments have some of their staff located in Sri Lanka and our increasing links and visits between offices enable us to understand cultures and people, which contributes to our continuous transformation from a London based professional body to a global organisation.”

Chief Executive Simon Culhane Chartered FCSI said today: “Sri Lanka should not be seen as a repository for cheap unskilled labour; it is a hidden gem with high quality, highly talented and highly valued people.”

The Chief Guest, State Minister of Finance Eran Wickramaratne said: “The development of human capital is one of this government’s strategic goals, so I am particularly delighted to be here at CISI and witness what can be achieved. The CISI has tapped into just a fraction of our highly skilled talent pool, we have much more to offer.”

The Embassy of Sri Lanka in the Russian Federation organized an information seminar to promote tourism to Sri Lanka, in partnership with Anex Tour which is one of Russia's leading tour operators, on 14 September 2018. The event was organized with the support of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB) and attended by 60 travel agents working under Anex Tour brand name. 

The event started with the welcome speech given by H. E. Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, Ambassador of Sri Lanka to the Russian Federation, who was the chief guest of the event accompanied by Madame Sanja Jayatilleka. Ms. Chathurika Perera, Second Secretary (Commerce) of the Mission, Ms. Madhusha Perera, Assistant Director (Russia and CIS) of Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB) and other Officials of the Embassy of Sri Lanka in the Russian Federation also attended the event.
 
Addressing the gathering H.E. the Ambassador thanked Anex Tours for their active role in building the bridges between Sri Lanka and Russia and noted the part of Russian Travel Agents in expanding people to people contacts between the two countries. 
 
H.E. the Ambassador further said that, Sir Arthur C. Clarke selected Sri Lanka among all countries of the world for containing the greatest cultural and ecological diversity in the most compact form. Ambassador Jayatilleka invited all Russian tourists to visit Sri Lanka and experience this diversified nature and the culture of Sri Lanka.    
 
During the session, Ms. Chathurika Perera, Second Secretary (Commerce) of the Mission gave a presentation on Sri Lanka tourism information resources and visa procedures. 
 
Further, Mr. Alexi Malyshev of Marketing Department and Ms. Anna Ckachenko, Head of Sri Lanka Destination of Anex Tours were also made presentations which are very valuable for promoting tourism between Sri Lanka and Russia.
 
Ms. Anna Kardanova of Aeroflot Russian Airline, during her speech announced the establishment of direct regular flight between Moscow and Colombo as of October 2018. 
   
Many Russian guests noted the efficiency of such information seminars and expressed their confidence that, the event was a great opportunity for them to learn more about Sri Lanka’s tourism industry with a view at expanding and diversifying travel programmes for Russian tourists in Sri Lanka.

Chandrin Fernando, former CIMA Sri Lanka Board Member received the prestigious Chairmanship appointment for CIMA’s Middle East, South Asia and North Africa (MESANA) Regional Board recently.Fernando will oversee the MESANA Regional Board comprising 28 countries. Previously, he held the post of Vice Chairman of MESANA.

Fernando’s service history within CIMA is an illustrious one including serving on the Sri Lankan Board as a Board Member during the period 2014-2016. Prior to this, in 2015 Chandrin was chosen to represent Sri Lanka as a member of the Global Market Committee. However, due to the Global Market Committee and Sri Lanka Regional Board being dissolved in 2016, he was invited to join the MESANA Board where he served as the Vice Chairman.

Previously, Fernando has also served other important leadership roles including being elected to the CIMA Sri Lanka Board as the Chairman of the Employer Relations Committee 2014, as a Member of the Student Development Committee in 2013 and contributing to the Marketing and Promotions Committee within CIMA Sri Lanka Division in 2008. 

He also holds multiple memberships in professional bodies including the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) UK, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants UK and the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) UK. 

Currently, Fernando is the Chief Executive Officer at Arpico Finance Company PLC, the second oldest finance company in Sri Lanka. With his visionary leadership, the company has spearheaded several new initiatives. Within a short span of two years since taking over the mantle of CEO, Fernando has been instrumental in successfully transforming and doubling the company’s asset book. 

With over ten years of experience in the financial services industry, Fernando is recognised as a financial expert, especially in the non-banking financial sector. He is also highly conversant with the industry’s regulatory framework.

Fernando holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) from the University of Sri Jayawardenapura and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Cardiff Metropolitan University (UK).