2018 has been a pretty long year. We've seen a lot unfold over the past 365 days. You've seen a lot happening: eSports startups, telecom tech, so much more in the international arena. What exactly happened??
In 2018 January we saw that WSO2 became profitable for the first time in 12 years. And, at the same time they also became one of the largest open source companies in the world. So, for all of you struggling entrepreneurs out there, there is hope.
Later, we saw the government launched a simple website that will allow you to check if you were eligible to vote in the local elections that were recently held. Sadly, this was the only government project in the year that we found, was functional. We had the e local government system which was an utter horrible fail.Poorly designed and the signup process was stupid basically.
We had the open data initiative, which the government had typed up once again this year. But, as we saw, the data is still outdated like it was when we first saw it at large four years ago. And, at that time at four years ago, the data was four years old already. So, that OpenNet initiative eight year old data is not really worthwhile and then of course we have the most recent initiative being a website launched by the police to help you track your phone. This we found, wasn't pretty but they have admitted that it's a work in progress. So, we'll be hoping that this one turns out better. So the key in the heat local e-commerce scene we saw Takas get on board a few new investors and that investment.
We've seen them expand into new areas, such as in their own e-commerce management system and just a few weeks back, they actually opened their own physical store in an attempt to be more accessible to customers. But, when it comes to investments we also saw Pick me raise 2.5 million dollars from the IFC.
Now, with this investment, they've expanded their services into new areas. They've got native trucks and they've also got a new food delivery recently. But, not to be outdone Uber too has launched their own service of cooks in Colombo and also got into the food delivery game.
On the topic of investments, we saw some high-profile ones been made internationally. Especially, in the form of acquisitions we saw Microsoft acquired Github for 7.5 billion dollars and then, we saw Walmart acquire Flipkart for 16 billion dollars. This hit a dent due to the Indian government adjusting regulations. How they'll adapt to that in 2019 is everyone's guess but, interestingly internationally we also saw that tech companies hitting that 1 trillion dollar valuation.
The first being
Apple
which was soon
followed by Amazon. Looking back at Sri Lanka, 2018, we saw was a pretty big year for Sri Lankan eSports. In 2018, eSports was officially recognized by the National Olympic Committee and we also formed a national eSports team that took part in the Asian Games earlier this year. In this team, we saw an athlete actually go on to bring us third place; the bronze medal as a league of Legends finals at the Asian Games.
Going forward, at the next Asian Games,
this will be a medal sport. So, hopefully we'll see a stronger team take part in 2020. But, also alongside that we saw our usual events such as the mercantile is post championship in school. A sports championship so on so forth along with play Expo which hosted the Sri Lankan National Cyber Games. Also, we saw the in-game eSports championship there as well. This was where we saw teams from across the region; from Maldives, India, Pakistan all coming down to Sri lanka and taking part. So, an indecisive 2018 has been a big year for Sri Lankan eSports.
Development in Sri Lanka has been taking
off as well. So, last year we saw it only being done by Airy Mac which released the hit game country granted. It wasn't a global hit success, but it was a very popular local hit. We saw earlier this year, that it has actually inspired other teams, other kids, to actually get into game development. 