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Hatch Open House scores mentor-mentee partnership

05 Sep 2020

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="372"] Elysian Crest Founder and CEO Kithmal Warnasooriya (left) and PayMedia Founder/Director Kanishka Weeramunda[/caption] By Uwin Lugoda
Hatch Open House, a mentorship initiative introduced by Hatch co-working space only five months ago, has already made big strides in empowering their start-ups. Recently, this initiative paved the way for a partnership between one of their mentees and mentors. The free mentorship programme, which connects start-ups with industry veterans for guidance and insight, fostered a relationship between PayMedia (Pvt.) Ltd., a local fintech giant in the smart banking space, and Elysian Crest (Pvt.) Ltd., a two-year-old software service-based start-up; helping them grow past the mentorship. While this is not Hatch’s first success story through the Hatch Open House initiative, it is the first one to take place during this round of the initiative. Speaking to The Sunday Morning Business, Hatch officials stated that they have had several success stories from the previous rounds of the initiative, where mentors have become business partners or mentors and mentees have formed a long-term and strong relationship. Elysian Crest has spent the past two years developing software solutions for their clients who need to enhance their business growth. The company has developed software and mobile applications in various domains such as education, e-commerce, and the automobile industry. According to Elysian Crest Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kithmal Warnasooriya, the primary aim of the company is to initiate and establish neobanks in Sri Lanka, which offer the complete banking experience to fit in the palm of your hand. In this scenario, the mentee is highly adept in the frontend technology relevant to fintech products. Meanwhile, PayMedia possesses experience in the fintech industry along with the backend technology and code-switching capabilities to support any new fintech innovations. Warnasooriya took part in the three-month-long mentoring programme, and had a one-on-one mentoring session at the beginning of the programme with PayMedia, which was a result of Hatch Open House’s matchmaking. Hatch officials stated that the reason they paired these two companies was because PayMedia Founder/Director Kanishka Weeramunda’s expertise as a mentor and entrepreneur was ideal to provide insights to the questions Elysian Crest had in terms of the challenges they were facing as a start-up. “We matched them after careful consideration of the industry experience Weeramunda brings to the table and the timely requirements of Warnasooriya. However, we mainly considered the tips PayMedia could provide the start-up on software solutions in the fintech domain.” During these sessions, Weeramunda mentored the young start-up in areas which spanned across assisting the mentee in billing their own IP, primary product innovation, establishing the start-up as a product-based company, and analysing the future potential and opportunities in the market. This new collaboration between the two companies is set to lead to the formation of a joint company involving PayMedia and Elysian Crest pioneering the neobanking culture in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, it also looks to provide an opportunity to learn about each other’s forte, transcending the contrast in backgrounds. Weeramunda and Warnasooriya stated that both companies have been gaining invaluable insights into the opportunities and trends regarding disruptive innovation. They explained that the scope of collaboration is vast and it enables the exchange of domain expertise. “The journey ahead holds massive potential and this partnership will ensure that the next generation will never get to step into a bank branch office. The overall banking experience will be embedded into a single-digital platform and thus, neobanks will step into Sri Lanka.”

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