Business

Lycamobile’s Subaskaran Allirajah: Refugee from SL owning UK business empire

Published

1 year ago

2024/08/18

Subaskaran Allirajah

“He cooks for everyone and we stand around the breakfast bar and chat. Some of the most important decisions the company has taken have been over meals he’s made.”

This is one of Lycamobile’s leadership team, and he’s talking about his boss, founder and chairman Subaskaran Allirajah. Lycamobile is a mobile virtual network operator, providing Sim packages to people across the globe, enabling them to make calls to anywhere else in the world – you might recognize its store frontage.

The name “Lyca” is based on Allirajah’s sister’s name, Lehka. “I didn’t want to name the company after her exactly in case it didn’t work out,” he explains. Today, Lycamobile is in 21 countries, has 15m customers and turns over €1.6bn. According to The Sunday Times’s Rich List, Allirajah is worth £180m.

The company has 11 subsidiaries and other parts of the business, too: there’s (to name but a few) Lycaremit, a money transfer service, LycaFly, which offers cheap flights, LycaTV, Lycalotto and Lyca Productions, which is working on the film 2.0, billed as being the most expensive Indian production ever, having released a Bollywood hit already.

“Films as well?” I ask as we course through Allirajah’s achievements. “You can make a good margin on films in India, provided you run it as a business. But more than anything, film is my passion; I just really, really love it. When I was little I loved to watch movies – I’d watch one or two every day. Of course, I never thought I’d release a movie,” he qualifies.

But sitting talking to Allirajah in Bella Cosa, his Italian restaurant in Canary Wharf (it’s opposite his office and came up for sale. He owns the Indian down the road, too), it quickly becomes clear that life hasn’t always been like this. The multi-millionaire grew up in Sri Lanka during the country’s civil war. His dad died when he was young and, as a teenager, he followed his brother to Paris to escape the conflict.

Once there, the family set up a restaurant, then a grocers. The grocers sold calling cards to people who wanted to phone abroad. “Suddenly, the distributor stopped supplying, and customers were running round trying to find cards. Other incumbents were too expensive… my brother and I thought, ‘why don’t we just start selling them ourselves?’”

Business went well and, in 1999, Allirajah moved with his wife, then a medical student in Sri Lanka, to London. Three years later, he set up his own firm, Lycatel, a calling card firm. By 2006, he’d moved into mobile. Calling cards “were great for calling internationally at a cheaper rate, but a pain to use for the customer. In the early 2000s, not everybody had a mobile phone. But between 2000 and 2006, usage increased.”

Allirajah decided to bring across the benefits of the calling card to a mobile platform – so customers would have the benefit of making international calls cheaply on their mobiles. “To do that, we had to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) – a user friendly innovation. Regulations in Europe had recently changed to allow this to happen, and the Netherlands was one of the first countries to adopt the change. So we launched Lycamobile there with T-Mobile.”

Move with the times

Now, Lyca’s reach spans Australia to Poland, Tunisia to the US. Allirajah says changing migration patterns and increasing movement means Lyca’s target audience has altered. “With calling cards, it was individuals looking to call outside Europe. Then, it was intra-Europe. Now, it is the international customer – anyone travelling internationally. People used to be happy with having two phones and having to switch between them; now they want just the one.”

Moreover, voice calls still play a huge part in Lycamobile’s offering, he adds, despite the enormous rise of data. That said, Lyca’s spin-offs focus closely on the rise in the use of data in its key markets: across Africa, for example, LycaTV offers specific content aimed at local audiences. You can see the logic: if you’re offering data, why not offer content for consumers using that data?

“We have LycaTV, LycaRadio – it’s great for customers to have all of that in one place. The challenge for all operators is to strike a balance between what people are doing, what they are using, and be one step ahead: what will they want next?”

A bigger purpose

But what has driven him to do all this? Attempting to extract a grand statement from him, we come to: “I simply took advantage of opportunities that were before me, because that was all I had at the time. Having some success has meant being able to give back to communities who need it. That is fulfilling.”

It’s his team who pipe up: “Subas is the most humble, generous person. He just will not admit it”; “he spends so much time giving others things, making the lives of others better.”

In 2010, Allirajah founded the Gnanam Foundation with his mum (Gnanam is her name). Financed entirely by his company, the foundation will shortly open Lyca Village in Northern Sri Lanka. The village has been built for a community that has been in a refugee camp for the past 25 years. “That is an achievement for me. I would like to do more projects like this, in places where it’s needed most.”

Allirajah’s wife is the chair of the Gnanam Foundation, and of LycaHealth. “She never got to finish her studies and become a doctor [she followed Allirajah to the UK and then studied biomedical sciences], so I said to her ‘I’ll make sure you will have many doctors reporting to you.’” LycaHealth owns and runs diagnostics centres in Canary Wharf and Orpington. It will shortly be opening a new, 11-storey facility, in Chennai in India. “The long-term plan is to have 10 worldwide. She’s the one behind it and now has over 200 doctors reporting to her.”

In addition to opening a village, a medical centre and releasing a film this year, Allirajah intends to press on with his plan to have 50m people using Lycamobile by 2020, focusing on Africa and South America for growth. The company has also just bought Ortel, a direct competitor in Belgium.

“It’s a good year, actually. And there is increasing interest worldwide for launching MVNOs – from football clubs to social media startups.”

All News Advertisement

Business

Salesforce Startup Program targets Sri Lanka’s high-growth tech sector

Published

20 hours ago

2026/01/9

Thilina Walpola

Bhattacharya (L) and Madusanka at the launch

Salesforce, the world’s leading AI-powered CRM platform, is set to expand its presence in Sri Lanka with the launch of the Salesforce Startup Program by the end of January 2026, signalling growing confidence in the country’s technology-led growth potential.

The move comes as Sri Lanka consolidates its position as the second-largest startup ecosystem in South Asia after India, with software, data and artificial intelligence-driven ventures accounting for nearly 60 per cent of the national startup base.

Industry observers say this concentration places Sri Lanka at a decisive stage where global exposure and enterprise access could unlock the next phase of scale.

Under the programme, Sri Lankan startups will gain access to Salesforce’s global ecosystem, including AI-powered platforms, business and technical mentorship, joint go-to-market opportunities and connections to enterprise customers, enabling founders to build globally competitive solutions from Sri Lanka.

“Sri Lanka has developed a strong base of technical talent and entrepreneurial ambition that is increasingly visible regionally and globally,” said Arundhati Bhattacharya, President and CEO of Salesforce South Asia.

“Through the Salesforce Startup Program, we aim to help startups move beyond early momentum to global relevance while delivering long-term economic impact,” he added.

He also said the initiative builds on the success of its Startup Program in India and Singapore, which today supports over 435 startups, including more than 230 AI-first companies. Several participants have expanded across Asia and beyond by building products natively on the Salesforce platform.

Responding to queries, he said Sri Lanka is also emerging as an important enterprise market for Salesforce, with major corporates such as John Keells Holdings and Cinnamon Hotels adopting the platform to modernise customer engagement, sales, marketing and loyalty management operations.

In parallel, Salesforce is strengthening the country’s digital talent pipeline through its Trailhead learning ecosystem, with plans to skill nearly 1,000 learners over the next year via local workforce development partners and community-led cohorts.

Chamil Madusanka, Head of Salesforce Practice and Salesforce Architect, said the programme arrives at a critical juncture for Sri Lanka’s startup ecosystem.

“Sri Lankan founders are increasingly building AI, data and enterprise software solutions with global relevance,” Madusanka told The Island Financial Review.

“What many startups need is structured access to enterprise customers, global mentorship and market exposure. This initiative creates that bridge, enabling local companies to scale faster while remaining rooted in Sri Lanka.”

He said the Startup Program is designed to act as a connective platform, bringing together startups, enterprises, technology partners, universities and developer communities to accelerate collaboration and innovation.

By Ifham Nizam ✍️

Business

Good news on risen foreign reserves exerts buoyant impact on bourse

Published

20 hours ago

2026/01/9

Thilina Walpola

CSE activities were extremely bullish yesterday following Central Bank Governor Dr Nandalal Weerasinghe’s announcement that Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves had risen to US $ 6.8 billion in December 2025, up US$ 791 million from November 2025.

The Governor provided the estimated economic growth while announcing the Central Bank’s policy agenda for this year.

In December Sri Lanka received budget support loans from the Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Dr Nandalal Weerasinghe

Amid these developments both CSE indices moved upwards. The All Share Price Index went up by 226.81 points, while the S and P SL20 rose by 100.01 points. Turnover stood at Rs 12.3 billion with 12 crossings.

Top seven crossings that mainly contributed to the turnover were: Lee Hedges 18.2 million shares crossed to the tune of Rs 3.9 billion; its shares traded at Rs 416, Commercial Bank 2.1 million shares crossed for Rs 467.6 million; its shares traded at Rs 215, Ceylon Hotels 429,000 shares crossed for Rs 128.7 million; its shares traded at Rs 300, LB Finance 650,000 shares crossed for Rs 105 million; its shares sold at Rs 152.50, Ceylinco Holdings 31000 shares crossed for Rs 104.5 million; its shares traded at Rs 3400, Melstacorp 200,000 shares crossed tfor Rs 35.7 million; its shares sold at Rs 178.50 and Three Acres Farm 400,000 shares crossed to the tune of Rs 29.6 million; its shares fetched Rs 740.

In the retail market top seven companies that mainly contributed to the turnover were; Wealth Trust Securities Rs 1.17 billion (55.8 million shares traded), Commercial Bank Rs 509 million (2.4 million shares traded), HNB Rs 370 million (870,000 shares traded), ACL Cables Rs 303 million (three million shares traded), Prime Lands Residencies Rs 283 million (7.9 million shares traded), Lanka Realty Rs 227.5 million (4.7 million shares traded) and HNB Rs 218 million (332,000 shares traded). During the day 223.7 million share volumes changed hands in 55116 transactions.

Yesterday, investor interest in Wealth Trust and banking stocks led to higher activity levels, brokers said. Further, the real estate sector also performed well. Lanka Realty Investments PLC acquired 51 percent of the total number of shares in issue of Lee Hedges, CSE sources said. 13,057,595 ordinary voting shares were bought at Rs 216 each.

Yesterday the rupee opened at Rs 310.12/18 to the US dollar in the spot market, weaker from Rs 310.05/15 the previous day, dealers said, while bond yields opened marginally high.

By Hiran H Senewiratne ✍️

Business

Launch of monograph ‘Development: Not By Economics Alone’

Published

20 hours ago

2026/01/9

Thilina Walpola

The Gamani Corea Foundation (GCF) is pleased to announce the launch of the monograph Development: Not By Economics Alone by Dr. Nimal Sanderatne, Emeritus Chairperson of the Foundation. The foreword to the publication has been written by Dr. Godfrey Gunatilleke, one of Sri Lanka’s most eminent development economists. The launch ceremony will be held on Friday, 9th January 2026, at 4.00 p.m. at the Horton Lodge.

In this monograph, Dr. Sanderatne argues that development cannot be understood through economic indicators alone. He emphasizes that the quality of human capital depends not only on knowledge and skills acquired through formal education, but also on deeper, non-formal processes embedded in a society’s culture and value systems. These influence human behaviour, shaping work ethics, attitudes to work and leisure, capacity for teamwork, preferences between short- and long-term goals, and patterns of saving and consumption.

Dr. Sanderatne is a distinguished economist and academic, holding degrees from the Universities of London, Saskatchewan, and Wisconsin, and was conferred the Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) by the University of Peradeniya in 2004.