Success Story of an Engineering Entrepreneur
An Interview with Eng. Keerthi Kodithuwakku
September 2021 |SLEN PODCAST
In the eleventh episode of the SLEN Podcast, Eng. Chamil Edirimuni speaks with the founder and the CEO of Jendo Innovations and Effective Solutions, Eng. Keerthi Kodithuwakku about his Success Story as an Engineering Entrepreneur.
Eng. Chamil Edirimuni :
You are listening to IESL SLEN Podcast, featuring a wide range of conversations on diverse engineering and non-engineering sectors of national importance. I am Eng. Chamil Edirimuni, and today, for our 11th podcast, we have a special guest.
He is a passionate young innovator, researcher and a serial entrepreneur. He is the founder and the CEO of two engineering companies, namely Jendo Innovations and Effective Solutions. Let us warmly welcome Eng. Keerthi Kodithuwakku for today's discussion.
Eng. Keerthi Kodithuwakku:
Thank you very much, Eng. Chamil and IESL for inviting me to today’s program.
Eng. Chamil:
It is said that “Willingness to take risks is the path to success”.
Eng. Keerthi, even at the time you were studying Electronic Engineering at the University of Moratuwa, you formed an engineering company. After graduation, you made a bold decision to not to work as an employee at someone else’s organization but to pursue your passion as an innovator and an entrepreneur. Could you please let us know about the start and progression of your career as an innovator and entrepreneur?
Eng. Keerthi :
Yes, there is a risk. But, Even though it was a tough decision, we had to take some risks to achieve success. Not only for me, but my co-founders also had similar risks because we studied in the same batch. We decided to start a company and pursue our passion. Also, there is another side to this coin. While there is a risk there is an opportunity as well. Doing this in the early stages of our career is the opportunity. then we have a lot of time and resources to focus on this goal. So, This is what we did.
Eng. Chamil :
Of course. I heard that you have Started entrepreneurs society too. What was your intention there?
Eng. Keerthi:
In the university, we understood that we have a lot of opportunities. Especially in Moratuwa University, we have a lot of networks. We could access most of the industrialists while we were studying at the university. So we decided to get the maximum opportunity out of it. More than that, we managed to use all our free time to focus on our business. During that time, we want to invest every resource we have to explore the market and generate opportunities for us. That is how we mitigated our risks.
Further to that, I wanted to create a path for other university students who are willing to do similar things. There I started the entrepreneurship society with the support of young entrepreneurs who are coming through the same path. Later this entrepreneurship society become very successful, and it was running accelerator programs like ‘Mora Ventures’ to supported many students who are coming through the same journey.
Eng. Chamil :
Then how about your company's growth? Specially how you expand to other countries?
Eng. Keerthi :
So, when it comes to a young graduate there is a career path we should follow. In our journey, we had a big challenge because there was no established path for us. So, what we did was, we explored what kind of solutions we can initially tap and then we managed to offer our innovative solutions to the businesses. Some of them were successful but some of them were not, but we took the positive side of the story. We managed to focus on that. Most importantly, we managed to get support from our senior engineers. That helped us a lot to pursue our dream and achieve the goals that someone else cannot achieve in such a short time.
My team and I wanted to take on challenges. Whenever there was a challenge, we were the first few to explore it. That kind of passion we had inside the team. With that energy, we grew in numbers and after that, we wanted to expand the business. Not only in Sri Lanka we want to expand to other countries as well. That is why we took the opportunity through EDB and went to Japan. And thereafter, we met a lot of Japanese companies and then we found that Sri Lankan companies have an opportunity in Japan. Rather than Japanese technologies being implemented in Sri Lanka. The opportunity was for Japanese companies to collaborate with Sri Lankan companies and do research and developments. As Sri Lankans, we have that level of trustworthy relationships and that level of brain capacity and innovativeness to work with their team. And from the Japanese side what they could bring was, they can bring the know-how to the table. That is how we organised the entire partnership and we have done successful projects by following that path.
Then we extended our operations to the UK as well. There we identified different opportunities. So we set up our branches in Cambridge University Start-up Incubation Centre and we managed to become top 10 innovation in the Cambridge Innovation Forum. There we presented our cardiovascular system-related innovations, Jendo. We managed to get a lot of attraction.
In life, we have tough decisions to make. As a result of those series of tough decisions, we will achieve great things. It is similar to the story of an eagle. Eagle has to decide whether it will go through the hard journey or stay as it and die. Likewise, hard work always pays off with profits so the only thing to worry about is that, are we on the right path.
Eng. Chamil :
We know that your main area of focus is Biomedical Engineering. You selected to explore this field at a time that it was not a selection of many engineers. Recently we heard that you were able to receive a US patent for a system you innovated to monitor the vascular system of the human body. No doubt, it’s a great achievement. Could you briefly explain what are the contributions you and your team made to the field of Biomedical engineering?
Eng. Keerthi :
Yes. There are many biomedical engineering innovations. So, since you asked about the US-patented vascular system health test, I will first start with that. This is a technology, a non-invasive one to understand the conditions of our blood vessels. This is not a simple condition. This is the inner cell layer condition. Which is the endothelium. That is the layer that gets affected at the earliest stage of any cardiovascular disease. That is the medical theory behind it.
But in engineering, we have to measure the physiological parameters to quantify what is the level of damage inside the blood vessel. So, we researched different sensors and then the process. There we took lot of patients and tried different ways. Finally, we came up with this ‘15 minutes method’ to get this result. During the process we went through all the available literature through senior medical professionals, engineering professionals to get the level of knowledge that we require to develop this kind of product. All together it took 7 years to come up with this complete product. The real contribution to the medical profession is to understand endothelial dysfunction as a non-invasive test. This is simple as any other test. Patients can go to the laboratory and get this test done.
But for the doctors, it is very important. Because this is an easy test to get a lot of information at a low cost. Most importantly this is applied in many areas.
Not only in cardiovascular diseases, but kidney diseases may also be sexual issues. Most of the cases are associated with this blood vessel condition. There they can apply this test and this test can play a vital role to identify the condition. To understand the importance of this I will tell you a brief example.
If you know about ayurvedic medicine, we know there is a theory called ‘naadi shastra’ that they have practised for over 5000 years. What they do is, look at the blood vessel condition. Then they diagnose the conditions. This is somewhat similar. But we followed the western medical principle which is implemented across the world and an easiest way. There is a link. I think in future we can find that link as it is going in a similar direction. When it comes to the evaluation process, we went through a rigorous evaluation process both locally and internationally. In the local setup, we went through the National Science Foundation and Ethics Review Committees in the Faculty of the Medicine University of Colombo. Also, we researched national hospitals. There were so many panels to evaluate this product. Then we went for a patent in the United States. There what we wanted to do was to prove our technology is unique to the world. So that is what we achieved from that product and now we have a unique product in our hands.
Then I will come to our eye disease screening system. That is to identify the diabetic retinopathy from the images. When we talk about image processing, machine learning and neural networks, This is a complete product which is using those principles in action. There we used image processing technologies to identify these features, and machine learning technologies to diagnose the conditions like a consultant doctor.
When we talk about the importance of diabetic retinopathy, more than 40-45% of them are having this diabetic retinopathy risk. The important factor is that about 95% can be saved if they were diagnosed at the early stages. Because diabetic retinopathy is considered the major course of blindness among adults. Early diagnosing is the key to save the vision for these millions of people. And that is what this technology can achieve.
Eng. Chamil :
I heard that you are doing research on a brain-computer interface as well. Is this product ready to launch or still in the research stage? Tell us about that.
Eng. Keerthi :
We call it ‘mindrone’. Because we put that brain-computer interface with drone technology to control the drone from the signals that we generate through the EG interface. As engineers, I think you can understand what is the level of innovation we can go with the brain-computer interface.
All these algorithms were done by Sri Lankan engineers. We are truly blessed to have this kind of engineer in Sri Lanka who can cope with any technology in the world. There are a few other products. Since we don’t have much time I will just name them. Some of them are non-invasive glucometers, modified early warning systems, eardrum conditions, Hypoxia condition detection for COVID patients, etc. Likewise, there is a lot of bio medical research going on.
We are really happy that we are contributing to this biomedical engineering field in a big way. And we believe as Sri Lankan engineers, we have a big opportunity with this biomedical engineering.
Because in combination, Sri Lankan doctors and engineers are very capable. So, if we can combine these two disciplines and develop products we can develop world-class products. Currently there are many research happening in this domain.
But the problem is that we still don’t have real marketable products. If we do like this we can do it in few years. Sri Lanka can earn a lot of money out of it.
Forcusing on that kind of a field is not just inventing technology. We want to change the entire market in to a new direction. This is what we do.
Eng. Chamil :
In addition to biomedical engineering, you have been continuously engaged in the areas like industrial automation, transport and logistic solutions, e-commerce systems, accident data management systems. If you can share some of your experiences and achievements in those fields, I think it will surely be beneficial to our audience.
Eng. Keerthi :
Yes. There are many innovations. But when we are doing those innovations, we have few focus areas both technologically and socially. Technology areas are artificial intelligence, Communications technologies, the Internet of things and UN SDG are the social goal as we also want to uplift the quality of life through technology innovations.
Since there are many engineers who are working in the road safety domain, I think this is relevant to you. As we know more than 3000 people die every year due to road traffic crashes. And this is a big loss for a country like Sri Lanka. A lot of stakeholders are trying to apply solutions to solve this issue. But to understand the root cause for this matter we need good quality data. Without that level of understanding our solutions may not be very effective. So what they understood was that technologically we can solve that data issue and the analytics issue.
So we applied our solutions there. We offered this solution and World Health Organization supported us to implement this. Now Sri Lanka Police is using this accident data management system to record, analyze, and predict the blackspots. So all the other stakeholders can gather around and apply their solution. This is a technology enabler. By doing that we hope that we can save so many people incomings few years. And when it comes to this kind of engagement, this analysis is not enough.
So let me talk about the E traffic police system. This is about social empowerment. If we won't have a disciplined society, to prevent this kind of issues happening. By doing this, the e-traffic police system enabled the general public to report accidents or violations, especially for the traffic violations whenever see them on the road. They can directly take a photograph or video graph from their app. And then you can directly send it to the police.
So those are linked. According to the Evidence Act, Sri Lanka Police can take the necessary actions and find out who other people committed the violation and then they can charge. So by doing this, we hope, as a technology enabler we can do a lot of things for this country. Most importantly we are very successful in implementing these solutions and we were supported by the state/ private sector organizations. We can do this.
Then I will move to a different industry, which is the tea industry. Ceylon tea is a brand we can use to conquer the world. And we have been using that for more than 100 years. When we talk about the innovations in this industry, it is very little. So as a technology company, we wanted to apply these technological solutions to improve the quality and reduce the wastage of this operation. So there we implemented IoT solutions in the tea production process. So by doing that, we hope our producers will be able to get a higher value and a competitive edge in the international market.
Then I want to talk about the transport and logistic solutions we are doing. There we can add a big value for the optimization. Because of the COVID pandemic we saw so many challenges with the delivery systems. A lot of wastage was happening. So we implement this solution to optimize the fleet and the organization can get the maximum benefit from their feet. Eventually, it will help the entire country.
These kinds of products have global potential. Actually what we do is, we used Sri Lanka as a good test market. Because people are very supportive and they know the value of the technology. So with that, I think Sri Lanka has very good potential. So with that testing ground, we can optimize our products and then we can reach out to the international market. So this is what we're doing.
Then I will talk about the IoT platform. That is: called Ananke IoT. By doing the Ananke platform, we enable other application developers to connect their applications and the devices from our platform and they can reduce their coordination. They can use this platform to enable the solutions. And then they can focus on the real value addition. So this is what we do. Apart from the innovations, there's a huge opportunity for highly sophisticated products. Now, since SLT engineers are also here, I'll talk about what we did in the fibre network planning and installation process. We needed planning tools and project management tools for the fibre network installation operation. So we build a tool to facilitate that. And we are very happy, in Sri Lanka, our tool is being used for most of the cases.
By doing that we can challenge the international products and also we can save many foreign revenues and more than that we can introduce this kind of product to that competitive markets in other countries. So this kind of technology solution will help us to take away engineering community forward.
When we start initially some people didn't believe that we can compete with this kind of international product. But we believe. We can do this because what we thought was the Sri Lankan engineers are capable. We fight with the system and even though all the important knowledge components and we managed to do it. That is the challenging nature of our team. So I'm really happy that the team is very capable of doing that kind of international level work. That is the culture that we are driving inside the company.
Finally, I will talk about E-commerce solutions. A lot of people think that E-commerce is a general saturated market and has no big opportunity for innovation, but it is not true. So we identified, there is a big demand in the large organization. Most of the existing solutions cannot cater to large organizations. We approached the new architecture. Then so many possibilities were opened in this domain. By opening those possibilities. For some of the companies who joined with us, we're able to create revenue for 50 million 200 million. So that kind of big revenue growth they were able to achieve by enabling these kinds of technology solutions. So that is the kind of capacity that we can give to the companies who are willing to use the technology solution. And by doing this we want to encourage them to drive their technology innovative, it suites the fourth industrial revolution. This is how my team is working on the multiple domains and applying these technological solutions to add value to the existing businesses and the upcoming businesses in the market.
Eng. Chamil :
Other than providing engineering solutions to your clientele your organization focuses on Research and Development work too. However, we know that the returns on the investments on research are very much uncertain. Therefore, many entrepreneurs will not tend to explore unknown domains through R&D that are one step beyond their usual comfort zones. In such a background, what makes you want to step into research and development in your fields of operation? Also, were you able to succeed in the areas of your research?
Eng. Keerthi:
Yes. Research and development is a core part of our organization. We mainly have to department, Enterprise, Department and the research and Development Department. In our research and development department, now we are planning to support Masters and PhDs also by collaborating with the universities. This is the level of R&D that want to run in Sri Lanka. And we understand that these kinds of innovation will take a longer time, like two years, four years. But as a company, we want to take the challenge. But during this time we will be able to give opportunities to both Market and the students in the universities. So these all of these people will be able to benefit from these plans as an organization, but we believe in our passion.
We employ the right people at the right point. By doing this the failure rate of the R&D is low. Because when we put some money in the R&D project, we know the person who is running that R&D is passionate about the project. And we know the person who runs the project is the person who knows the project best and learned. By doing that we avoid that challenge of filling. In the meantime, we take big risks and achieve significant success compared to any other research organization. So this is a simple practice, but it is very effective.
But there can be challenges. There are a lot of situations like when we engage with foreign parties it is very hard to build their trust first. But by engaging with one or two projects, we can build their trust. Trust because. The best way to speak is to show it in action. So even though we know our engineers are capable, we have to show that by doing the challenging tasks and the other important thing we should understand Is that engineering research is not a one-man show. You need a good team and the culture to run it. So this is how we can make this research and development successful.
Otherwise, even though we know the research and developments are very good things to follow up on, we can't make it a success. Then we lose the trust of the investors of the grant organization. We lose the trust, but when we follow their culture we can hold that trust. The reason why we strongly promote the research and development culture. Because doing the research, it will lead to invention. It will result in the invention and then invention will lead to innovation and innovation will lead to a product. So this is the way that a country like Sri Lanka can benefit and win opportunities in the world.
Eng. Chamil :
Great that is an eye-opening for all of us. Can you elaborate further about the strategic movie we
Eng. Keerthi:
I believe that this is the way that Sri Lanka should strategize.
Especially as I said before, Sri Lanka has a good test ground. We should not think that Sri Lanka is a very small market. Sri Lanka is not sufficient enough for us to grow. We should go out. But before you go outside, you can use Sri Lanka as a test market. Everywhere in the world when they are developing a new product they need to put it on to test the market. Sri Lanka has different cultures, different geographies, a different set of communities, so the mindset is different from the other. Therefore, we can have different-different samples, which requires research. So that level of capacity is there. So especially when we are entrepreneurs we should see the opportunity of every challenge. So This is why I believe Sri Lanka is a very good ground for us to do this research and development. By doing that Sri Lankan companies can reduce this level of risk in R&D. In the meantime, they can position their R&D at a very high level, because the R&D can gain us a lot of success when it comes to the world market.
Eng. Chamil :
It’s true that you are engaged in enterprise solutions and research focusing on the 4th Industrial Revolution. Mind you, the sad truth of our country is that we are still going back and forth between the 1st and the 3rd industrial revolutions. That is the ground reality here.
In such a background, do you think that there is any valid reason for a country like ours to join hands with the 4th Industrial Revolution? In fact, in your opinion, what should be the approach of our country to reap the benefits of it?
Eng. Keerthi:
When we talk about the fourth industrial revolution, we should know what is the first, second, third industrial revolution, are? As you also highlighted, when we think about the industrial revolution, it won't come overnight. It is a chain of innovations and economic revolutions associated with it. Otherwise, there will not be an industrial revolution. All these changes are happening where the technology domain and the economic domain matter.
I will talk about the third industrial revolution. This is a very important thing because it created a whole cyber world. Now we know there are companies which don't have an office. But can have billions of values. And that is the power of the third industrial revolution to this economy. So when it comes to the 4th industrial revolution, we're talking about merging the physical world, the cyber world and the biological world as one. Because with the first industrial revolution they were dropped the animal power and then transform into machine power. There they forget the biological word.
So where are we as a country? Similar things we talked about when we talk about R&D. As a country we should look at what we have. I will tell you a brief example. When I visited the Mobile World Conference in Spain, I met a Bangladeshi entrepreneur who was a leading entrepreneur. So he said in our Sri Lankan Pavilion we were marketing about some technologies and certain other things. But he came to me and told me that guys you are marketing the wrong thing here. Sri Lanka is the most professional country in our sub-continent and that is what you should market. So that is how the outsiders see as positive. Here we are not thinking about those values. So we should get together and think about the areas we can specialize in, and then we can become a successful product developers. Then we can become successful with the 4th Industrial Revolution.
We can take the ‘Jendo’ product as an example. When we invented, that cardiovascular testing we saw an Israel company was operating in the same domain. They were using a different technique but trying to solve the same problem. So we believe that we can go ahead with better technology. So we presented it to many organisations, many evaluations, a lot of people appreciated it, but to become a successful product that is not enough. We need to prove our uniqueness. We want to claim in the international arena that we have something better and something unique and something valuable. So This is why we went through the beta process, which is the. The process that we can claim the value for this and then we can present it to the international research communities, especially the leading journals and the conferences. We can present it and get the level of acceptance for this technology. Likewise, when we are doing something like that we can go through this part, and that part is already there and Sri Lankans can go through that path and that is how we should fight with the 4th Industrial Revolution.
We can take one more example about our diabetic retinopathy system. If we do that thing in Japan, it might take a long time. Even Japanese companies also know that. So by doing it in Sri Lanka as a testing ground, Sri Lanka can support this kind of innovation very fast. So by doing this in Sri Lanka it can get evaluated at very high-end technology and medical organization. Therefore, there are countries that had inherited problems due to their systems. When we don't have a system in Sri Lanka, they can use that as an opportunity without complaining about it. So as a business, what we should do is we should collaborate with foreign countries whenever required. And try to build world-class products to compete with other countries. Because there are so many countries who are trying new products which are applied with the fourth industrial revolution. If Sri Lanka thinks that Sri Lankan professionals can develop this, then Sri Lanka is at a very good stage to fight with this new industrial revolution.
So in simple terms, if we start a fight from today, we can win the race. because as Sri Lankans we have all the opportunities. And we have success stories. Therefore, I believe we should not be we should try as best as we can
Eng. Chamil :
Eng. Keerthi, you are still 31. As a young engineer, innovator and entrepreneur who contributed to the engineering sector and who is recognized both locally and internationally, what is your final message to the young engineering fraternity of the country?
Eng. Keerthi:
Finally, I want to say. You all are born in a land of opportunity. You have access to the entire world. Now the entire world is connected.
And the most important thing is you, you all have a gift. Forget what the age is. You are saying that I am 31, but age is just a number. What I do is the one that I was made of. So, I have made a chain of choices during my career so far. I am going to make a chain of choices and that will define where I am heading. Five years down the line, ten years down the line I will be defined by the choices I made. But you are here today, and you are listening to this. If you are to decide your journey you can do it now. You can unleash your power by understanding your passion.
There is a very simple way to understand your passion. You think about your likes, you think about what others think you like, and you think about what kind of challenges that the world is facing. Think about the intersection point of these three. That is where your passion is. That is the passion that you can pay off. So, you can follow your career and you will become successful. All the engineers, even though you are young or even though you are senior, you have your values and assets with you. Say to a young engineer you have your time. say a senior engineer you have your experience.
If you are to follow the passion you will succeed. maybe 3 years down the line. You will be a totally different person and you will be able to do something for the world. This is what I want to say. As a country, Sri Lankan engineering fraternity is capable of doing anything in the world.
Sri Lankan engineers can change the destiny of this country.
As a final remark what I want to say is, use your gift, understand your passion, unleash it. Then you are unstoppable. Thank you.
Eng. Chamil :
Thank you very much Eng. Keerthi Kodithuwakku for spending your valuable time to share your valuable ideas and experiences with us today. I’m sure those will be beneficial for our engineering fraternity. We honestly wish you all the success in your future endeavours.
Eng. Keerthi:
Thank you Eng. Chamil and thank you IESL SLEN for inviting me to the event. I hope during today’s event I was able to add a few insights to you all.
Eng. Chamil :
This is engineer Chamil Edirimuni from the SLEN podcast. Have a great day.
