brand logo

The duo @ Studiollin – Chanali De Silva and Dulanga Ehalamalpe

20 Sep 2020

  By Mahika Panditha  Happy Sunday everybody! This month has gone by ridiculously fast, don’t you think? Anyways, I would like to introduce you to these two wonderfully talented young entrepreneurs who successfully run their own business, whilst also being in a relationship. Isn’t that absolutely adorable? I am fangirling – hard. Meet Chanali De Silva – a young lady right out of her Diploma in Marketing at the University of Colombo, and Dulanga Ehalamalpe – a creative from birth and also the man behind the production work! They hope to grow Studiollin to its fullest potential over the course of the following years, and that is their main goal right now. Chanali’s passion is in marketing, as we can tell! “Personally, my passion for marketing, especially social media marketing, was not developed until I joined Zigzag, which is one of the leading online fashion brands in Sri Lanka. I joined them right after I completed by Advanced Level (A/L) and I’m super grateful for the two years I worked there,” she shared. As for Dulanga, he is passionate about visual storytelling – which makes sense! He is very intrigued by how content has the ability to drive the value of a business. Before we dive in, I asked Chanali and Dulanga about their guilty pleasures. Chanali shared: “Well, I have different personalities for different people. Actually, it’s more like an identity crisis I would say. And on the other hand, Dulanga still jams to High School Musical songs. I’m not complaining, haha!” Without further ado, let’s get right into it.   Do tell us a little bit about yourselves.   Chanali: I’m a 22-year-old who studied at Anula Vidyalaya, Nugegoda, and I’m the last in a family of five. Simply, I’m just a girl with some big dreams working hard to make it a reality.  Dulanga: I  was born in 1994 and studied at Royal College, Colombo. Even though I did my Advanced Level in the commerce stream, I have had the passion and the need to create something of my own in the creative industry.    You guys are entrepreneurs. What inspired you both to start your own businesses? C: The repetitive and routine nature of working from nine to five didn’t really make me feel satisfied for some reason. I felt like I was simply doing what society expected of me instead of actually doing what I really liked. Dulanga and I love how flexible our days are and that’s definitely what inspired us to start our own business.   D: It’s simply because I did not like having a boss, and that made me seek more opportunities where I can have more control over the business. Through Studiollin, Chanali and I were able to freely express our creative ideas. We love the kind of lifestyle we have right now and not having to stick to a specific routine actually makes us excited to face each and every day.    You guys run Studiollin. What’s the story behind it?    C: To start off, I’ll give you a small brief about Studiollin (www.studiollin.com). Studiollin is a multidisciplinary creative digital content marketing agency providing a wide range of tailored content and production and marketing services throughout Sri Lanka. Simply, we are photographers, cinematographers, designers, strategists, and creative directors. Studiollin will take care of your brand’s entire digital presence. D: I was already in the creative business before we started Studiollin. I was working with many well-known brands across Sri Lanka on visual content creation and after a few conversations we had, we decided to make it official and came up with the name Studiollin, which is also known as “Studio All In”. Basically, a one-stop place for all your content creation needs.    What was the process to start your own business like?   C: At the start, while managing the business, providing services to the existing clients, building our new studio, and acquiring new clients were a bit challenging, since everything was happening so fast at the same time, we were able to manage everything somehow. At the end, here we are.  D: As I mentioned, I was already creating content and was already a part of the creative industry and because of that, we had an idea as to how and when we should start.  Even still, assessing finances was the hardest part for us.    Any funny memories you can share with us?    C: Well, there are too many. During the construction period of our studio space, we couldn’t find a proper vehicle to transport the new bathroom door and had no rope to tie it onto the top of the roof either. So, we pretty much had to keep it on our heads while Dulanga was driving us back to the studio. It was a 30-minute drive and during school traffic. A lot – and I mean a lot – of people were staring.    What would you say is the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far?    No matter what you do in life, people will always say things. So always do what feels right and trust your instincts.   Do you have any advice for budding entrepreneurs?    This is something we came across while watching the movie Founder (2016) which really did get carved into our minds – “just one word: Persistence”.   Photo credits: Studiollin | Dulanga Ehalamalpe


More News..