Category: Daily Financial Times

In a glittering celebration of partnership and performance, Metropolitan Technologies Ltd., sole authorised distributor for Canon for over 51 years, hosted the Canon Metropolitan Partner Awards Night 2024/25.

It stood as both recognition of excellence and a reaffirmation of leadership in Sri Lanka’s printer hardware industry. The evening was graced by the presence of Canon Singapore Senior Manager, Canon Regional PSD Area Marketing Umeto Hiroki and Metropolitan Technologies Deputy Chairman Ivor Maharoof alongside Director/CEO Ali Asgar Roshanali. Together, their presence underscored the enduring partnership between Canon and Metropolitan, one that continues to drive innovation, growth, and excellence across the nation.

In his address, Umeto Hiroki announced that Canon, through Metropolitan, achieved an impressive 61% market share in Sri Lanka’s printer hardware industry during 2024, reaffirming the brand’s market dominance and the strength of its dealer network.

He commended Metropolitan and its partners for their commitment to Canon’s global standards of performance, innovation, and customer satisfaction.

Speaking on behalf of Metropolitan Technologies, Ali Asgar Roshanali extended appreciation to Canon and the dealer community for their steadfast partnership and contribution to the brand’s success. He emphasised Metropolitan’s continuous focus on empowering dealers, enhancing customer experience, and introducing world-class products tailored to Sri Lanka’s evolving business landscape. A total of 27 awards were presented during the evening, recognising outstanding dealer partners for their achievements in sales growth, service excellence, and brand commitment. Each accolade celebrated not just performance, but the shared vision that has sustained Canon’s leadership in Sri Lanka for over five decades.

The evening also witnessed the introduction of Canon’s MAXIFY GX7070, a high-performance 4-in-1 MegaTank printer strategically positioned for SMEs and corporates alike. Engineered for productivity and reliability, the GX7070 features pigment-based ink technology that delivers waterproof, smudge-resistant prints, ensuring professional-grade quality for business documentation and high-volume workflows. It stands as a symbol of Canon’s ongoing drive to innovate and add tangible value to modern enterprises. More than a celebration, the Canon Metropolitan Partner Awards Night 24/25 was a tribute to 51 years of partnership, trust, and progress, as Canon and Metropolitan continue to lead Sri Lanka’s printer hardware industry into a new era of innovation and excellence.

Global giant Salesforce is championing the cause of making companies become ‘Agentic Enterprises’ in which humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents drive customer success together.

According to Salesforce, the Agentic Enterprise represents a new model for work – where AI elevates people rather than replacing them. In an Agentic Enterprise, every team operates with 24/7 intelligence: sales leads are never missed, service never sleeps, and every employee has an AI partner that helps them move faster and make smarter decisions. The result is a new era of productivity, customer connection, and growth.

‘In deed, helping companies to become an Agentic Enterprise is our key goal,’ Salesforce President and Chief Engineering and Customer Success Officer Srini Tallapragada told a group of journalists from South and Southeast Asia, including the Daily FT, at the recently concluded Dreamforce 2025 event in San Francisco.

Tallapragada explained, the business rationale behind Salesforce’s push to create ‘Agentic Enterprises’ is that enterprises, both big and small have been much slower to adopt AI compared to consumers. He described this gap as ‘the big divide.’

To help enterprises to bridge the big divide, in October last year, Salesforce launched Agentforce. Reflecting its innovative spirit, Salesforce at Dreamforce 2025 showcased its latest innovation ‘Agentforce 360,’ the world’s first platform designed to connect humans and AI agents in one trusted system – empowering every employee to achieve more, every customer-facing moment to deliver more, and every company to operate with unprecedented intelligence and speed. It was described as the most complete platform for building, controlling, and deploying trusted enterprise AI agents at scale.

‘What I clearly see when I talk to CEOs across the world, is people are tired of demos and pilots but they are not getting business value or helping their bottom line,’ recalls Tallapragada.

In that context, he said, Salesforce’s ‘Agentforce 360’ has been designed to deliver controlled, contextual, and consistent experiences across every customer and employee interaction-it gives teams the fastest path from AI prototypes to production-scale agents.

At Dreamforce 2025, the company showcased what it means to become an Agentic Enterprise featuring real customer demos from OpenAI, Williams-Sonoma, Inc., Pandora, Accenture, PepsiCo, FedEx, and Dell Technologies.

Tallapragada said Large Language Models (LLMs) alone are not enough and AI agents need a lot of context just like a human.

Agent Script, a new scripting language for controlling agents, is a core component of the Agentforce 360 platform release. Agent Script combines the creativity of AI with the rigour of business workflows so that agents perform the exact way a company wants them to, every time. Agent Script allows enterprises to define agent behaviour with a human-readable expression language, which enables conditional logic, precise tool use, and guided, deterministic controls. This new level of control empowers Agentforce to tackle even the most complex tasks with confidence.

‘LLMs need context, and context is very hard to get. This is why we built the Agentforce 360 platform. Context is powered by several features. One is data access across the enterprise, which is all in different silos. The Data 360 feature in Agentforce is a trusted, unified data layer that gives every agent context. With innovations like Intelligent Context and Tableau Semantics, companies can turn unstructured data and analytics into rich context and understanding for AI. Via Slack, Agentforce provides the conversational interface for humans and agents to work together, connecting knowledge, actions, and data in real time. Another is the memory – short-term and long-term memory, and the reinforcement loop. That’s what context is. So, people are moving from what they call prompt engineering to context engineering. That is what Agentforce 360 does,’ he said.

Tallapragada recalled that when Agentforce was launched, the AI agents were solving zero and the humans were solving about 3 million cases. ‘Today, AI agents are solving 1.8 million and humans are only solving 1.8 million, which proves AI agents are taking a lot of the workload,’ he said.

Salesforce is also enhancing Agentforce to support more native languages apart from English. ‘We are adding seven languages to agents and, pretty soon, we will add another 13, 15, 40 languages, and this is especially important for this field, especially in Asia,’ Tallapragada explained.

He also spoke of Agentforce being a game changer for enterprises to follow up on sales leads. ‘When we get over 10 million leads every year, we cannot follow every lead, we don’t have people to do it. So ‘Agentic Enterprises’ rank all the leads. They take the most important leads, and they have our sales reps, who we call Software Development Representatives (SDRs), and they go follow the biggest, most important leads. We have an AI agent, which is picking leads and curating them. Agentforce is managing over 50,000 leads like that automatically,’ Tallapragada added.

He said that Agentforce 360 is making companies Agentic Enterprises so they can provide better service, better marketing, and better sales. ‘That’s the vision we have,’ Tallapragada emphasised.

Janashakthi Finance PLC, formerly known as Orient Finance PLC and a subsidiary of JXG (Janashakthi Group) has announced a solid financial performance for the first half of the financial year ended 30 September 2025, reporting strong growth across key business metrics and continued progress in executing its long-term strategic priorities.

The Company delivered a Profit Before Tax (PBT) of Rs. 241 million for the first half of FY2026, marking a 22% year-on-year (YoY) increase, supported by disciplined portfolio expansion and enhanced operational efficiency. As the Company continues to invest in strengthening its long-term growth trajectory, it delivered a resilient Net Profit After Tax (NPAT) of Rs. 141 million.

Net Operating Income surged by 34% YoY to Rs. 1.43 billion, a reflection to the Company’s sharp focus on core income generation and prudent balance sheet management. The Loans and Receivables portfolio grew by 49% YoY to reach Rs. 26.7 billion, driven by renewed lending activity across key customer segments. Deposits rose by 17% to Rs. 16.9 billion, underlining the growing confidence of customers and investors in the brand’s trusted financial stewardship.

Janashakthi Finance Chairman Rajendra Theagarajah said: ‘These results reflect the continued strength of our strategy and the trust we have earned among customers and investors. Our focus remains on building a business model that is sustainable, scalable and relevant in a rapidly evolving financial landscape. The growth in our core portfolios demonstrates that our strategic priorities are translating into tangible progress, positioning Janashakthi Finance as a leading player in the sector.’

Acting CEO Sithambaram Sri Ganendran said: ‘The first half of 2025/2026 highlights the outcomes of our disciplined execution and our commitment to deliver value across all stakeholders. We have made significant progress in deepening customer relationships, optimizing operational processes and expanding our lending base. As we look ahead, we will continue to strengthen our digital capabilities and customer experience to drive sustainable growth.’

Janashakthi Finance said its performance in the first half of 2025/2026 underscores its ability to balance growth with prudent risk management and strategic foresight. The Company continues to focus on customer-centricity and operational excellence, setting a solid foundation for continued performance in the second half of the year.

DFCC Bank’s flagship remittance platform, Lanka Money Transfer (LMT), developed by Synapsys Ltd, has been awarded the Silver Award in the Regional, Rural and Remote Services in Inclusions and Community Services category at the National Best Quality Software Awards (NBQSA) 2025, held recently at the Taj Samudra, Colombo.

The recognition highlights LMT’s role in promoting financial inclusion and ensuring secure, efficient, and affordable remittance access for millions of Sri Lankans working overseas and their families at home. With over three million Sri Lankans living abroad and many of them supporting households in rural areas, LMT serves as a trusted digital channel that connects these communities to the formal banking system.

Developed for DFCC Bank by Synapsys Ltd, the platform has expanded formal remittance access through an increasing network of partner institutions and digital channels, ensuring that more families benefit from safe, convenient, and transparent remittance services.

DFCC Bank Senior Vice President – Offshore Banking and Remittance Business Development Anton Arumugam said: ‘For many Sri Lankan families, remittances are more than income. They are a foundation of stability and opportunity. Through Lanka Money Transfer, we ensure that these funds reach families securely and affordably, allowing them to participate more fully in the formal economy. This recognition reaffirms DFCC Bank’s ongoing commitment to improving access to financial services and strengthening the economic resilience of our communities.’

Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Vindya Solangaarachchi said: “This achievement reinforces our focus on using technology to serve people better. At DFCC Bank, every digital innovation has one goal – to make banking simpler, safer, and more inclusive. LMT reflects that purpose, bridging distances and enabling families to stay connected financially, wherever they are in the world.’

With approximately 300,000 to 400,000 Sri Lankans leaving for overseas employment annually, the need for reliable and accessible remittance services continues to grow. LMT addresses this by providing convenient overseas remittance channels and seamless, cardless withdrawals for recipients across Sri Lanka.

The NBQSA Awards, organised by the Sri Lanka Section of the BCS (Chartered Institute for IT), celebrate excellence and innovation in software development, with national winners gaining eligibility to represent Sri Lanka at the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance (APICTA) Awards.

New Zealand ended a nine-year wait to avenge one of their most painful defeats as they comfortably beat Ireland in a Chicago rematch that failed to live up to the pre-game hype.

Having suffered their first-ever defeat by Ireland at Soldier Field in 2016, the All Blacks came from behind in an impressive second-half showing to crush Irish hopes of another memorable day in America.

Ireland lost influential forward Tadhg Beirne to a red card after three minutes, and while Tadhg Furlong’s try helped them lead 10-0, Ardie Savea’s fine score brought the All Blacks to within three at the break.

Jack Crowley’s penalty stretched Ireland’s lead to 13-7 early in the second half, but that proved their last score as Tamaiti Williams, Wallace Sititi, and Cameron Roigard all crossed in the space of 15 minutes to ensure a deserved win for the southern hemisphere giants.

It is a bitterly disappointing result for Ireland Head Coach Andy Farrell on his return from his British and Irish Lions sabbatical.

New Zealand, however, will be confident of securing a Grand Slam of the northern hemisphere after clinching a third successive win over Ireland in front of a sell-out 61,841 crowd at Soldier Field.

The Management Club (TMC) – Colombo Chapter presents ‘The Way Forward on ‘Strategic manoeuvring in tough times – Live or Lead!’, an inspiring knowledge-sharing session scheduled for Thursday, 27 November at 6 p.m. onwards at the Atrium Lobby, Cinnamon Grand Hotel, Colombo.

The ‘Way Forward’ initiative, spearheaded by Project Chairperson and EXCO Member Mahesh Senanayake, provides a platform for top leaders in the corporate sector to share their experiences and insights, fostering knowledge enhancement and professional development among business professionals.

The keynote speaker for the evening will be Ravi Jayawardana, Group Chief Executive Officer of the Maliban Group of Companies, which comprises of Maliban Biscuits Ltd., Maliban Milk Ltd., and Maliban Agro Ltd.

Prior to his current role, Jayawardana served as Country Head of Sales at Coca-Cola Sri Lanka, where he successfully led his team to win multiple Asian and African Best Practice Awards. He was also among 25 top marketers selected by Coca-Cola’s global network to develop the Marketing Blueprint for Coca-Cola South Africa (Port Elizabeth Division). In this powerful session, Jayawardana will share his expertise on navigating business challenges, leading with purpose, and strategically manoeuvring through uncertain times – offering real-world lessons on what it takes to lead rather than merely survive. The 40-minute session will conclude with an engaging Q and A segment, providing participants the opportunity to interact directly with the speaker.

This event is open to both members and guests, with a participation fee of Rs. 3,000 per person (Members) and Rs. 3,500 (Non-Members), inclusive of snacks. A networking session will follow, offering participants an excellent opportunity to connect and share ideas with like-minded professionals. For further details contact via email: tmc.srilanka@gmail.com or call Joseph/Ashley – 071 586 0000 or Mahesh Senanayake – 071 728 8588.

The Sri Lanka Purchasing Managers’ Index for Construction (PMI – Construction), as reflected by the Total Activity Index, has reached 67.6 in September 2025, recording the strongest increase in activity observed since late 2021.

Its compiler the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) said the respondents highlighted that the persistent availability of project opportunities has provided a steady underpinning for growth in the construction sector.

Most survey respondents reported that nearly all types of construction projects are now becoming available, with road rehabilitation projects in particular driving a further increase in the New Orders index in September.

Further, both the Employment and Quantity of Purchases indices expanded in September, suggesting positive prospects for the construction sector.

The Suppliers’ Delivery Time remained lengthened during the month.

‘A favourable outlook is projected for the construction sector, driven by the anticipated growth momentum in construction activities,’ the CBSL added.

In a significant show of private sector commitment to regional development, East India Holdings, parent company of International Distillers Ltd., (IDL), has announced its partnership with The Management Club to support the Northern Economic Summit 2026, scheduled for January in Jaffna.

Speaking at a press briefing held at the Cinnamon Grand last week, IDL Chief Executive Officer Janek Jayasekara outlined the conglomerate’s vision for the North, emphasising that the initiative transcends conventional corporate sponsorship to reflect a deeper commitment to balanced national progress.

The company’s engagement with the Northern Province carries particular significance given the personal connections of its leadership.

Chairman and Managing Director Ravimohan Tissanayagam hails from the historic Tissanayagam-Barr Kumarakulasinghe family, whose roots trace back to Jaffna. This heritage, combined with his conviction that national prosperity must be built on equitable regional development, underpins the Group’s involvement in the initiative.

The Rukmini Tissanayagam Trust, established by Tissanayagam in memory of his late wife, carries forward a distinguished lineage. Rukmini Tissanayagam was a great-granddaughter of both Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam and Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan, two towering figures in Sri Lankan history renowned for their intellectual contributions and public service. Today, the Trust continues this legacy through programs promoting education, empowerment, and community development across Sri Lanka.

Jayasekara characterised the Northern Province as standing at an exciting juncture, a region defined by resilience and renewal, rich in heritage, talent, and untapped potential. With a robust educational foundation, dynamic youth population, and significant infrastructure improvements including the KKS Port, Palaly Airport, and Yarl IT Hub, the region is positioned to emerge as a hub for trade, technology, and enterprise.

East India Holdings has identified substantial opportunities for public-private partnerships that could generate employment, empower young people, and support local entrepreneurs, particularly women-led businesses and small and medium enterprises. The company stressed the importance of pursuing development while safeguarding the region’s cultural identity and environmental resources, ensuring growth remains both inclusive and sustainable.

Jayasekara framed the Northern Economic Summit as more than a business event, describing it as ‘a call to action’ to unite vision with responsibility and connect local capabilities with global markets. Critically, the address emphasised that development in the North should not be viewed as a regional concern but as a national imperative.

‘The private sector has a vital role to play in shaping Sri Lanka’s future, not only through investment and innovation but also through empathy and meaningful engagement with the communities that sustain us,’ Jayasekara stated, articulating a philosophy that places social responsibility alongside commercial objectives.

On behalf of East India Holdings, Jayasekara extended appreciation to The Management Club, the Government of Sri Lanka, and all partners contributing to the Summit’s realisation. The company expressed pride in participating in what it described as a journey uniting ‘heritage and hope, enterprise and empathy, community and country’ for the benefit of Northern communities, national prosperity, and future generations.

The Northern Economic Summit 2026 is expected to bring together policymakers, business leaders, and international investors to explore opportunities in one of Sri Lanka’s most historically significant yet economically underutilised regions.

Tries from warp-speed back-row pair Ben Earl and Henry Pollock helped England see off Australia as their power-packed bench ultimately swung an untidy opening autumn Test.

After the Wallabies edged a 10-try classic last year, England took revenge with a performance heavy on perspiration, if a little short on cohesion, at Allianz Stadium Twickenham.

Australia trailed by only three points at the break after wing Harry Potter’s breakaway try had given them a lifeline back into the contest.

England have won eight successive Tests, a run stretching back to their defeat in the opening game of this year’s Six Nations in Ireland.

The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) recently held the second Progress Presentations of its Research and Development (R and D) Program, showcasing pioneering research collaborations between universities and industry aimed at driving innovation in the country’s telecommunication sector.

Organised under the Sri Lanka Telecommunications Act, No. 25 of 1991 (as amended), TRCSL’s R and D Program serves as a vital platform connecting academia, industry and the regulator to foster applied research that addresses emerging technological challenges and contributes to the sustainable growth of Sri Lanka’s digital ecosystem.

The 2025 session featured ongoing research projects from the University of Moratuwa, University of Kelaniya and University of Ruhuna, covering a range of innovative topics such as:

n Spatial sound recording and reproduction for personalised speech intelligibility enhancement in noisy environments

n IoT-based sleep monitoring tools to support independent living

n Machine learning-enabled network optimisation to reduce atmospheric ducting interference in LTE-TDD networks

n Software innovations to enhance educational engagement and independence for visually impaired schoolchildren

The event brought together researchers, university faculty, TRCSL Research Committee members, and industry representatives, creating an engaging forum for presenting progress updates, exchanging ideas, and exploring future collaborations.

Interactive Q and A sessions following each presentation encouraged knowledge sharing and feedback, helping align academic innovation with industry needs and regulatory priorities.