• Nikin Matharaarachchi on how AI can empower rather than replace

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay. In our increasingly digitised world, AI is no longer a buzzword to consider for the future. Over the last two years, it has recognisably become an integral part of our life and work, shaping everything from how we shop online to how we consume news, interact with brands, and even understand public opinion.

This year Forbes Asia named three Sri Lankans to its 30 Under 30 list. With its reputation for spotlighting young changemakers across industries, the annual Forbes list for Asia is a benchmark for ambition, innovation, and influence on a global scale. One of the Sri Lankans recognised by Forbes this year, data scientist and entrepreneur Nikin Matharaarachchi, has made AI his business. Literally. 

Included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list for 2025 under the category of Social Media, Marketing, and Advertising, Nikin sees AI as a means to empower meaningful innovation, especially in emerging markets like Sri Lanka. Through his company Synapse AI Labs, he is using AI to help businesses understand data better. 

The Sunday Morning Brunch sat down with Nikin for a chat on how AI not only validates his work but also shines a global spotlight on the potential of homegrown tech solutions.

Harnessing AI

Nikin’s passion for tech began early. “I have been interested in tech since the beginning,” he shared. “Even around the time I was doing my O/Ls and A/Ls, I was really drawn to things like self-driving cars. It just drew me to the AI sector.”

He went on to pursue a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science at Monash University and is now nearing completion of his PhD, also at Monash, specialising in AI and computer vision. 

“My research mainly has to do with computer vision,” he explained. “I am looking at the emotions of people using video – being able to identify people’s emotions for use in therapy and so on. That’s what I’m studying.”

It was during a delayed start to his PhD during the Covid-19 lockdown period that the seeds for Synapse AI Labs were planted. 

“My PhD enrolment got pushed back by a couple of months,” Nikin said. “I had a few months at home, which wasn’t enough time to start a full-time job. So I thought I’d use the time to start something. It became a pet project. I saw a financial value to it and realised that people would be willing to purchase it. That’s how it started. I made Kommon Poll first, and then the company emerged from that.”

Founded in the latter part of 2021, Synapse AI Labs began as a solo venture focused on AI-driven marketing technology (martech) tools. The initial development and testing of its flagship product, Kommon Poll, was done almost entirely by Nikin himself.

“Its growth initially involved me building the tool and testing it. I had a couple of associates who helped a bit, but it was mainly just me,” he said. 

“It was a single product with myself as the company’s sole employee. Then, towards the end of 2021, I applied for the John Keells X Accelerate programme. I went through the four- or five-month programme and learnt the basics of building businesses. That was when I realised I needed help with marketing and outreach.”

One of the key decisions was to keep the company based in Sri Lanka. “If you’re marketing, one of the best places to start is your home country,” Nikin explained, adding that having a home court advantage paid off. 

“It was a niche requirement that Sri Lankan products and brands had as well; a lot of competitors didn’t have support for Sinhala, Tamil, and Singlish. Being able to support Sri Lankan brands was one of the goals.”

In mid-2022, Nikin made his first hire – the company’s Head of Growth and Marketing. “That was around June or July 2022, and it was mainly to overlook client outreach. We got our first client at the end of 2022, and we also won the John Keells Accelerate programme that year. That’s when we started to gain a bit of traction. 

“We now have a team of seven people, both on the development side and marketing side. We are also looking to hire more in the future because we are scaling up to reach the Southeast Asian market.”

Local insight with global ambition

Kommon Poll remains the company’s flagship product. A social intelligence platform, it tracks and interprets digital narratives across platforms, languages, and sentiment trends. 

“It identifies presence, user-generated content, and brand reputation on digital sources – social media, blogs, and articles. We try to monitor people’s sentiments. 

“It was developed not just for the Sri Lankan market, but one of our key selling points to the market was localisation. We built switchable Sinhala and Tamil functionality; we had models for Sinhala and Tamil and also for Singlish. Even things like how people in Sri Lanka use WhatsApp instead of Slack – localisations of that nature are built in.”

The tool currently supports over 210 languages and is expanding its reach into the Southeast Asian market. Following the success of Kommon Poll, Nikin and his team recently launched MentionedBy.ai, a generative AI-based Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tool. 

“There has been a big shift towards generative AI,” he said. “Even Google has released its AI search. MentionedBy.ai helps optimise and strengthen brand presence on search engines powered by AI.”

As Sri Lanka becomes increasingly digital, tools like Kommon Poll become more effective. “If you are only looking online, it can be automated,’ he noted. “But if you look at how the Sri Lankan economy works and how digitised it is, there is still a relatively large portion that is not digitised – people without smartphones or internet. For those individuals, tracking opinions is a challenge. But more and more people are moving into the internet age, especially the younger generation.”

AI and the future

Nikin sees AI as a deeply transformative force. “About a year ago, I heard at an Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) conference that there would be another AI winter, like a hype period that dies down. That happened with self-driving cars. But from what I can see, it’s not dying down anytime soon. It will be integrated into everything we do,” he said.

He drew parallels to the rise of the internet and smartphones, noting: “AI will bring that same kind of change. This is not the first wave of AI products we have had. Google Glass and similar products from the early 2010s were ahead of their time, but with this new boom of AI technology, I think they will have a resurgence. 

“It has a lot to do with timing. If you look at the iPhone, when they first announced it, it wasn’t really the first of its kind. But it was properly timed and it changed everything. That’s what’s happening with AI now.”

Nikin also addressed the biggest misconceptions people had about AI. “A lot of people fear AI will replace them or take their jobs, especially with Sri Lanka going into digitalisation,” he noted. 

“I believe it’s similar to what people would have felt when a calculator came in, or when computers came. It didn’t really reduce the job market. It became a tool. AI is going to assist you. There will certainly be some job roles that will be consumed by AI, but AI will also create roles to replace them. It becomes a supportive element.”

That said, Nikin warned against overestimating AI’s creative potential. “People think AI can do everything – that it can be used as a complete replacement for human effort or creativity. But humans bring in that creativity. AI models use existing data to create a version of something, rather than making a completely new idea,” he added.

He further expressed his belief that AI’s strength lay in relieving humans of mundane, repetitive tasks, noting: “It can rescue our effort on those and let us focus on more productive elements like research and development.”

Forbes 30 Under 30 and what lies ahead

Brunch also inquired about the road to becoming part of the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 list. Nikin had submitted his Forbes 30 Under 30 application about a year ago. 

“They reached out to me at the end of last year and asked some questions, much like any other interview. Then the judging process happens. They don’t let you know until it’s publicly announced; it was quite exciting to see. I’m really happy, not just for myself but for the attention it brings to Synapse AI Labs and the team. Without the team, this wouldn’t have existed. A huge thanks goes out to them,” he said.

Looking ahead, Nikin is focused on expansion. “In a broad sense, we are now looking at Southeast Asian expansion for Kommon Poll. I was based in Malaysia for a while and we are looking at the South Asia-Pacific region. MentionedBy.ai just launched last Monday. We are looking for global expansion there as well. We have received much interest from Australia and the US, and that’s what we are focusing on.”

With custom project requests coming in from both local and foreign clients, the path ahead is as ambitious as it is promising and really drives home the fact that the idea of AI transforming the future is not some future possibility. It is instead a reality already unfolding.