SL business confidence remains bullish: Salesforce

Though Sri Lanka has borne the economic fallout of cyclone Ditwah in the recent past, confidence in the Sri Lankan business landscape and IT services sector remains bullish, cloud based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform Salesforce Senior Director Sridhar Hariharan said, recently at a press conference in Colombo.

“The business landscape definitely, barring some incidents such as the cyclone, which are natural disasters, we feel very bullish about the overall business landscape. We see it improving for the better and growing every single day, and that gives us a lot of confidence.”

According to Salesforce’s own analytics, Sri Lanka’s startup momentum ranks it No. 02 in the South Asian region, with 60% of its startups being software and data led startups. It further noted that the island nation has growing founder momentum and global interest.

“Ulitmately of course the service sector, is a booming sector. They contribute a lot to the economy, the GDP. That is something closely related to some of the products we sell, because it's really about customer service, marketing, commerce and sales. These are the things that are very aligned to our platform.” Hariharan said.

Sri Lanka’s Services Purchasing Manager’s Index however only expanded by 50.5 indices in November 2025, indicating a slower expansion compared to the previous month. 

“Another thing that is very encouraging is the Sri Lankan Government is also taking a lot of steps to use IT, use technology, for the benefits of the citizens. That's a great sign, it gives us a lot of confidence that we are doing the right thing.”

In the month of October alone in 2025, Sri Lanka’s ICT and Business Process Management (BPM) sector’s earnings surged by 26.71%, raking in $ 154.50 million, according to Export Development Board (EDB) data. The sector accounted for half of Sri Lanka’s services export earnings.

The EDB stated that the surge was due to an expansion in demand for fintech solutions, cloud support services, and remote back-office operations in Sri Lanka.

Hariharan further noted Salesforce’s work with Sri Lankan conglomerate John Keells Holdings. “John Keells is doing business with us, and I have been personally working with them. They are going through an entire digital transformation journey and they have adopted the salesforce platform in a big way.”

“They are really trying to transform their CRM, sales, marketing, and specifically within John Keells’ retail, they're revamping their loyalty management programme – the loyalty programme that you sign in when you go shop, and that enables you to get more incentives and so on and so forth.” 

Salesforce further announced its Salesforce Startup Programme, slated to take place from the end of January, with the intention of onboarding Sri Lankan startups to its own ecosystem of products, which include AI-based products, mentorship, joint go-to-market opportunities, and induction into a growing local community of Salesforce users.

Source - The Morning