Entrepreneur | CEO | Founder | Business Mentor | Investor | Lecturer

With over 24+ years of experience in ICT and 10 years in the financial technology domain and eco-system support, Kanishka Weeramunda is the Founder and CEO of PayMedia (Pvt) Ltd, while he is also the Co-Founder and Director of DirectPay (Pvt) Ltd. With dynamic experience in Information Technology, Operations Management, and Business Development, he is dedicated to innovation and strategic leadership, particularly within the FinTech domain.

For Kanishka’s immense contribution towards the Sri Lankan IT industry, he was awarded the ‘Most Valuable ICT Entrepreneur of the Year’ at the National Business Quality Software Awards (NBQSA) in 2015 and went on to bag two more awards in the year 2018 for ‘Best CEO of the year’ and ‘Future Leader of the Year’ at the CMI Management Excellence Award.

One of the highlights in Kanishka’s professional life was receiving the CSSL Best Founder of the Year 2020 award by Mr. Namal Rajapaksa, Minister of Youth and Sports at the CSSL National ICT Awards 2020, the CSSL ICT Leader of the Year 2018 award and the same year to be named the ICT Entrepreneur of the Year 2018 at the National Business Quality Software Awards. Kanishka’s hard work really paid off when his startup took part in the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards 2018 in China and won a Gold award for Sri Lanka.

His success is built by his outstanding results and experience in many diverse areas and working for a number of multi-national companies. Weeramunda is also the founding co-chair of StartupSL.LK, which is the single largest online platform for startups and freelancers in Sri Lanka, connecting them to thousands of other startups, as well as other key stakeholders such as investors, mentors and incubators. He has been a mentor for many successful start-ups and he passionately contributes towards building the start-up and entrepreneurial eco system in the country as well as in the Asia Pacific region.