Suren Pinto has taken Wavenet beyond the shores of Sri Lanka to more than 23 countries, and in extremely diverse markets from South America to Central America, and Africa. Today, he is focused on positioning Wavenet to meet the demands of a 5G world.
What inspired you to start Wavenet?
I was 19 at the time, biding my time to get into University in Australia, when I found people coming up to me and asking me to develop websites or build software for them. At the time, I didn’t have a clue about software, but had read an article on how India was making it big in outsourcing. This sparked the idea of entering this space, if people were demanding these types of services, why not bridge the gap. Growing up with an entrepreneur father, who by then had been in business for almost 40 years, I was not hesitant to venture into something on my own. But, being a student at the time, I needed my father to finance it. So, I called him and told him about the idea. I wanted to have a development centre in Sri Lanka to provide IT services in Australia. Unlike in the past, this time he took me a little bit more seriously, and gave me the money to start off. With Sri Lankan universities on strike at the time, we managed to hire some students and kickstarted the business. The first contract we got was from my Dad’s company. We set up an email infrastructure for them. We then connected the email server to a free sms site, so that people didn’t have to go into the office to check email, instead, they got email alerts on sms, which was revolutionary at the time. From then we never looked back.
Tell us about your journey of growth.
Today, we have gone beyond the shores of Sri Lanka, and operate in 23+ countries, and in extremely diverse markets from South America to Central America, and Africa. We have covered continents like Asia and the far Pacific. It has been a journey of learning and growth, of understanding and finding our place in the world. It has been a constant battle to improve and better ourselves, because you understand what “to be global” means, only when you go into international markets.
What were the largest projects?
Our largest projects have been in South America, where we deployed some large scale projects for some operators. We have done some similar projects in Africa and Asia. We worked with two of the largest operators in Thailand. To give some context to the size of these projects; one had a customer base of close to 40 million, and the other around 25 million.
Your entrepreneurial journey has been challenging but successful. What were the ingredients that contributed to it?
I believe it’s the grounding I got. Because my dad was a businessman, from my young days, I had an entrepreneurial spirit. I remember, even as kids, we used to enjoy looking at the Fortune magazine after dinner, going through the GDP of countries. I was curious by nature, but the transformational kind of success factor for me, has been discipline.
Entrepreneurs by nature are a little isolated, so you need to motivate yourself, and that has to come from within. Combine self motivation with authenticity, and that makes the difference.
What is your vision for the company?
We are a company that is focused on our skills and the capabilities of our products. We don’t want to be identified by a product, we want to be identified as a solution. Our vision right now is to revolutionize digital transformation in telecommunications, and we are ensuring that we are well positioned in meeting the demands of a 5G world. Earlier, telecommunications used to be considered a vertical, but with the evolution of technology, telecoms is no longer a vertical, it’s more horizontal and revolutionizing everything.
We see our impact largely being in consolidation of the industry, where we interface and open up the telecoms universe to these verticalized industries. Healthcare is one of the largest verticals that we see telecom impacting, and with the integration capabilities, the IOMT, enabling those services is where I see Wavenet being able to make a really big impact, over the next three to five years.
Has Covid impacted your business and how?
Last year when everything was shutting down globally, it was a cause for concern. We obviously had plans. We had not anticipated such disruptions of this scale. So, we had to go back to the drawing board and start talking about contingencies. We made a decision not to downsize. We did plan worst-case scenarios, but we were lucky that we did not have to execute those, so we did not have to downsize the company. We were lucky because we were in telecoms. Since telecoms was an essential service, and the demand for telecom services grew, we were a little immune. The projects had already been contracted, and none of it got cancelled, so the impact was less at the time. But our challenge now, as is the case for any B2B business, is reaching new markets, and winning over new clients.
When Sri Lanka celebrates its 100th year of independence, where do you see your company?
The future of Sri Lanka depends on our capability to adapt to technology and be a hub for that. The fact that we can create technology centric brands is what is ultimately going to make the country successful. We don’t take blueprints from other people and develop software. What we develop is our own. As crazy as it may be, we will do our own research and build and market our own product. We have always done that and that’s the kind of success story that we want, because that’s how we’ll build a brand around us internationally. I see us being able to play a significant part in building that capability and competency. There will be certain challenges to get there, penetrating more markets is one of them, strategically evolving to be in line with the technologies of the day is another. Fast forward 27 years, we will not be doing any of the products that we are into today. There will be a rebirth for the company. It will be very different but certain elements will remain the same like our product-centric DNA, and our desire to build and market our own products.
Would you consider going public or getting on board investors sometime in the future?
Yeah, we probably would. There are two possible scenarios for companies like us. One is you will end up going public, or someone will want to buy you out. For most tech companies that’s going to be a reality. Internally generated cash can only do so much. If you don’t make those right decisions at the right time, you are actually stunting your own growth.
What does it mean to you to be part of the SL@100 initiative?
What the SL@100 programme can do for a company is to hold a mirror in front of you, so that you start to see what you don’t see on a daily basis, and that sometimes may be ugly. But if you see it you have the ability to fix it. Stax has the experience and capability to guide businesses through that process. So, with their support I believe we can fine tune the company so that we will be able to grow exponentially.
What was the boldest decision you have ever made?
Going to difficult markets. It takes courage to do that. We have gone to some rough places in the world where you could even get killed. The fact that we have been courageous to make those decisions I think has worked pretty well for us.
What was the one leadership lesson you learnt the hard way?
How to balance people and that commitments matter. It’s not about the contracts you sign, it’s not about what’s legally there or not. At the end of the day, people go out of their way for you, because they like you, and that was ultimately, the reason why they bought from me.