ADL was featured in Sri Lanka’s only daily business publication, DailyFT. Read the full article on DailyFT.
Providing a glimpse of the capabilities of emerging technologies beyond the currents trends in the digital space, Axiata Digital Labs (ADL) has grown to be a key player in this segment, offering disruptive technology solutions. ADL was established as the technology arm of Axiata Group Berhad, a South-East Asian telecom giant operating in 6 countries, including Sri Lanka. Currently operating in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia, ADL boasts a comprehensive set of service offerings including IoT, AI, Machine learning and adjacent technologies enabling the telecom, fintech, healthcare, and entertainment industries.
At the heart of ADL’s success story is its team of world-class engineers led by CEO Thushera Kawdawatta, consisting of over 1000 talented individuals including data scientists, IT professionals, creative design engineers and over 100 cloud computing experts specializing in the top 5 Cloud platforms – Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Huawei Cloud. In its efforts to enrich the lives of people through technology, ADL has designed and developed over 15 innovative platforms and products and completed over 150 digital transformation projects.
Since his appointment as CEO, Thushera Kawdawatta has propelled ADL to reach great heights and re-engineered its growth trajectory within a short time span. At present, ADL continues its journey of excellence by setting itself apart from other digital service providers with the technical expertise and deep telco domain knowledge of its engineers. ADL’s investments in creating a talent pool that has the capacity to overcome the industry’s challenges has paid off well, as the company achieved exceptional growth in the year 2020.
Commenting on ADL’s journey, CEO Thushera Kawadawatta said, “It has not been an easy task by any means to reach this far and earn such recognition within a short period of time. The credit goes to the entire team who worked tirelessly to deliver projects on time, helping the clients during these challenging times. We have been involved in some of the best digital transformation projects during the last two years with our team’s deep innovation and technical skills, which allowed us to stay ahead of the curve within the industry. Truly exceptional services with a customer-first approach have earned us the trust and confidence of our customers who have been a part of this journey.”
ADL has been at the forefront of digital transformation as the company continued to invest heavily on Research and Development. Among ADL’s core digital solutions, are its AXP and DTE platforms. AXP is an open-source, end-to-end API management platform designed to help the telecom industry monetize their existing network assets. It is also a component of the DTE platform which helps companies transform their BSS (Business Support System) – to a rapid service delivery environment allowing telcos to become more agile and competitive in today’s digital world. ADL’s technology is also behind industry-leading fintech apps such as smart wallet, Genie for Dialog Axiata are notable highlights. One of ADL’s key successes during the past year is the development of a new self-care app for Malaysian telecommunication’s provider, Celcom, which ultimately became the number one self-care app in Malaysia, with a rating of 4.8 and 4.38 on the iOS and Google Play Store, respectively.
ADL has been duly recognized for its digital transformation efforts at renowned awards ceremonies. ADL, along with Dialog Axiata, clinched an Excellence Award at the TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World in 2020. These awards recognize outstanding accomplishments in Digital Transformation across Communications Service Providers (CSPs), Solutions Developers, and Innovators, which was a remarkable achievement that further inspired the growth formula of the company. In 2019, ADL, along with Robi Axiata, Dialog Axiata, Huawei, Ericsson, Appitum Technologies and Deutsche Telekom, collaborated on the TM Forum Catalyst project building the “App Trading Marketplace: a Framework for CSP Collaboration” . The project, based on the merits of the DTE framework, clinched the award for outstanding use of TM Forum assets at TM Forum’s Digital Transformation Asia in Kuala Lumpur. Recently, Axiata Digital Labs was appraised at maturity Level 3 for version 2.0 of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), becoming the first Sri Lankan organization to have claimed this achievement.
With ADL’s capacity to deliver disruptive digital solutions in the vastly evolving digital space with the likes of 5G, Big Data & AI, ML, the company is better positioned to cater to the rising technology needs of the new era. It was learnt that ADL is on the move to invest in developing the team, upscaling their knowledge while investing in R&D, focus on innovations as the future of most industries looks to be predominately digital-based.
