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In conversation with Bhanuka Harischandra of Surge Global
By Yakuta Dawood
A few days ago, the Forbes 30 Under 30 list under the category of media, marketing, and advertising featured two Sri Lankans, namely Surge Global Founder and Chief Growth Officer Bhanuka Harischandra, and author, activist, and researcher Yudhanjaya Wijeratne.
Even though this news has been overshadowed by the new Covid wave, it is still fresh and praiseworthy, as it is a quiet a big deal for a Sri Lankan to be listed in a Forbes list. When we saw the news, we were very excited to feature Harischandra in our Develop It Yourself (DIY) column in a bid to get to know more about him and his company, Surge Global. Following are the excerpts of the conversation we had with the young and successful entrepreneur.
With a smile on his face, Harischandra stated that the news was wonderful to hear, as Surge Global has never participated in any sort of award ceremonies, cover shoots, or in any other similar platform, as they are committed to their work at hand.
“This kind of signifies that you are headed in the right direction and the work that you've been doing over the last couple of years has been added to it. Because of that, it was just a very nice thing for both myself as well as for the team,” he highlighted.
Career with a plot twist
Being raised in a family full of doctors, Harischandra was also directed to follow in his family’s footsteps in regards to choosing his profession. Surprisingly, during his Advanced Levels (A/Ls), Harischandra was very enthusiastic about playing video games with his friends and then creating YouTube videos of them doing so.
Reminiscing, he stated that in Sri Lanka, playing video games to make a living was not something someone wants to hear about, as it still has not been identified as a career.
“We connected with content creators around the world and published our video game content in which we were generating about 60 million views every single month. Based on our views we were compensated through the YouTube monetisation programme,” he noted.
Adding to it, Harischandra said that he ended up flunking the A/L examination, as he was much more focused on his passion. “However, the day I got my A/L results in 2014, we got to know that YouTube has banned monetisation in all countries, excluding five nations, which, naturally, led us from having a business to not having one overnight,” he added.
A few years down the line, the plot twist is that from becoming a doctor, Harischandra focused on video games and then later understood that there's a market not just for the distribution of the content but a market for the actual creation of content too.
“We were approached by companies to create content from a YouTube channel. We went from doing YouTube for business to understanding there was a need in social media and digital marketing in general. So, it's been a long one for almost six years now, but the trickiest part is you don't really have a foot to stand on and like with any Sri Lankan parents, you have to constantly hear about ‘please go do something with your life’. So, it definitely is a tricky one, but also rewarding if you go the right way,” he further added.
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Bhanuka Harischandra[/caption]
Journey of Surge Global
Speaking in this regard, Harischandra said that identifying the niche in his profession was not a decision taken by him but taken by some others.
“In the sense, we were good at one specific thing where we understood how people spend time on the internet. It wasn't some innate skill that we had. We were looking at that problem because we wanted people to interact with the content we were creating not because we wanted to focus on marketing, but because the longer the watch times our videos had, the more money we made. So, there was that predisposition there,” he explained.
Elaborating further, he said that when they were approached by the companies after losing all their YouTube ad revenue, they also were required to manage social media, marketing, and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for the companies.
“We were just going back home googling things and learning how to do it and then going again to the business by selling it. It was very much a self-learning process and we stumbled upon it, not because we were particularly good at it, but it was more along the lines of interest. This is what the market was asking for and that was literally knocking at our door and we decided to go down the path and see what happens,” Harischandra added.
When inquired about the investment involved in establishing the Surge Global platform in 2015, Harischandra stated that a lot of capital wasn’t required, as it was basically a service-based company. Nevertheless, in 2018 Surge Global got an investment from Tavistock, a multibillion-dollar private organisation owned by the British billionaire Joe Lewis.
“They essentially own hundreds of businesses around the world that are massive in size, and they wanted to leverage the technology and the marketing services we have across their business portfolio. Even currently, some of our work does include servicing their portfolio of businesses as well,” he highlighted.
What’s the present status of Surge Global?
They established a business with just himself and his friend who he played video games with, and have progresses to the current company which has over 80 employees at present. Commenting with regards to the subject, Harischandra said that the company focuses on three specific domains.
Firstly, it’s the digital strategy; in which Surge helps brands audit their digital footprint and activities, understand whether they are heading in the right direction, the quick wins that can boost their growth, and layout strategies to help maximise their ROI (return on investment) on digital spend.
“It helps them to identify what they should be doing online, in terms of acquiring new customers, optimisations, automation, and basically transforming that into the experience,” he said.
Secondly, it’s the focus on digital marketing. Under this, Surge allows businesses of all shapes and sizes to get access to expert-level support and guidance to navigate their digital marketing efforts.
Explaining this, Harischandra said: "This segment focuses on business growth – i.e. how do you increase your lead generation, what should you be doing on social channels, what should you be doing, what is your advertising strategy, what is your data strategy, what are you doing for the company online, etc.”
Finally, the next component Surge focuses on is software engineers and product development, i.e. how do you build websites and application ecosystems and platforms.
“Essentially, Surge helps your business leverage technology to be better by setting your businesses anywhere else in the world, and set up their marketing and engineering teams inside Colombo. And that's kind of how the search business operates,” he added.
Explaining further, Harischandra stated Surge has more than hundreds of customers. However, at least 20 to 30 key customers are currently obtaining services from Surge.
“So it changes quite drastically because we have clients, you know, some clients pay upwards of millions of dollars a year and then some clients pay like, $ 1,000 a year so there's a very broad range. However, there are people who use our products via a user-generated content platform called Avocado in which you get deals and discounts on restaurants that usually pay us like $ 100 a year,” he explained.
When inquired about the corporate culture of the company, Harischandra said that even though Surge is a very collaborative environment, the company has a very performance-driven culture and is fast-paced, which means a competitive environment.
Explaining the corporate culture, he said that “we kind of maintain it that way because what we've done is we've built an environment which rewards the growth quite immensely. We pay significantly above-market rates in the industry and we've created this environment where people can really grow if they are willing to put in the effort”.
Adding more, he noted that all employed people at Surge are self-learners who also have multiple accreditations from online programmes not like government universities.
“We have built an entire ecosystem where people can actually have our own Surge academies to register for free with thousands of free courses online to pick up all the skills. Later, that person can apply to our internship from those credits that they have got and then we use that internship as a way to train and hire new talent into the company,” he elaborated.
The focused market
Unlike other marketing firms in Sri Lanka, Surge is a platform that caters mainly to the international market due to all the compromising the company had to face with local clients. Explaining this decision, Harischandra noted that Sri Lankans want everything to be handled and afterward, they do not pay on time.
“Hence, we took a strategic decision to not service the local market. Right now, excluding a few, there are no other local customers at all. Our focus is being a global business with customers across the US, UK, Australia, the Middle Eastern regions, Colombia, Germany, and some parts of Europe. It is easier to have a conversation rather than selling services in markets like Sri Lanka, India, or Bangladesh,” he said.
When inquired about the challenges faced to operate in international markets, Harischandra added that there isn’t one big challenge but a series of little things that just make things complex. Speaking on the challenges, he said that one of the problems is the complication around receiving and sending money in and out of the country.
Secondly, the key challenge is to make people believe in technology services and marketing services that are built-in in Sri Lanka, resulting in the sales being tougher.
“Since it’s a neighbouring country to India, people mostly assume that it is cheap labour, whereas the services are quite expensive compared to several service providers in the US itself. So, kind of differentiating ourselves in that space is very difficult,” he added.
Speaking in the context of challenges, unlike several other industries in Sri Lanka, Harischandra stated that Covid-19 has positively impacted their industry due to the work-from-home (WFH) facility and efficiency in video calling.
“I think what happened was people were far more receptive to the concept of doing all the work virtually, so we actually had a significantly higher advantage because we were delivering work faster, we were more productive, and as a result, 2020 was a year where we actually grew rather than losing the track. We right the right place at the right time!
“We are on track right now close to $ 2.2 million, which is about Rs. 500 million. The main reason we've been growing so fast is not because we are getting tonnes of customers very quickly but we're just not losing anyone that we have,” he added.
Finally, giving the concluding remark, he noted that the goal is to expand from a service business to build their own technology, their own IP, and products. “Essentially, we plan on being a global technology company or at least that's what we are aiming to become in the next five years,” Harischandra concluded.