The journey here: My Story in a Nutshell!

35 + years in the making, it has definitely been a rollercoaster ride, full of ups and downs. Used up a good 19 years of my life working my way through the schooling system, because I had no other choice. Fortunately, I was able to graduate high school with a scholarship to a state university to read for a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology. Which is considered a big deal in Sri Lanka.

Finally armed with the superpower of choice and absolutely no experience whatsoever, I stepped into the world confident that I would make it in life, determined to be the next Steve Jobs.

I was determined to be financially free and live an extravagant life and after so diligently reading Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki, I was convinced that the best way to do it would be to launch my own business. So as a fresh school leaver I teamed up with my best friend and his cousin, and pooled in all of our savings at the time which was roughly around 1,000 U.S. dollars and printed t shirts for the ongoing ICC World Twenty20 at the time which was hosted in Sri Lanka. We were about to become  filthy rich. We printed 1,000 t-shirts and sold a staggering 70-80 units, that too to our close friends and family. The rest? Well some of them are still in my store room, gathering moths and silk worms. But the dream? It lived on..

Rising from the rubble

Having burnt every penny in our pockets, there we stood, like a bunch of idiots, with nothing to do, or so we thought. In my mind I was just big loser, I had just failed big at my first entrepreneurial endeavour, but unbeknownst to me the world saw us differently.  To the world we were the guys who made T-shirts. And just like that people started reaching out to us, requesting us to make them t-shirts for their clubs, schools, businesses etc.

What they did not know is that we had no idea about making T-shirts other than outsourcing the production. But we jumped on the opportunity, and from out first order we made a whopping profit of 3 U.S. dollars, which hardly covered our telephone bills. But the orders kept rolling in, one after the other, and so T-Shirt GEEK was born, an apparel manufacturing business specializing in custom knitted wear. And within just a span of five years we went from subcontracting to owning a fully equipped factory capable of printing, stitching and packaging with an output of roughly 300 to 500 units a day. 

Diverging Paths

With all success stories there is sometime a dark side, and my dark side was my education While focusing on growing my business I had neglected my studies and my Bachelors degree was suffocating as a result of it. I was almost on the verge of losing the opportunity to complete my degree, and I had to chose between going full on with the business and dropping out of college, or focusing on college and completing my studies. The clock was ticking and I had to chose fast, and the circumstances lead me to chose the latter. I decided to give my best shot at completing my degree.

But with that meant I have to reduce the time that I could use on the business, and I decided it was only fair to hand over my shares to my best friend and business partner, because as much as we have grown within the past 5 years, the journey ahead was still grueling and full of obstacles, and I have to give him credit for building it up to the standard it is today, going 15 years strong. 

Once an Entrepreneur, always and entrepreneur

Back with the books and seated behind screen, this definitely wasn’t the life for me, but it had to be done, and within 2 and a half years time I was done with my degree, which I am truly glad about. While I do not know where I would have ended up if I dropped out and focused on the business alone, the opportunities that opened up by completing my studies were definitely worth while. 

As a final requirement for the completion of my degree, I had to complete a six month entrepreneurship at a recognized IT company, and I chose to apply at Arimac Digital which was still a start up at my time of joining with roughly about 50 employees. The work-life at Arimac was an interesting experience, starting off as a intern game developer and eventually being promoted to a R&D developer and project manager I worked there for approximately 2 and a half years. But I could never be content with sitting behind a desk, so I decided to trade occupations with what I had always wanted to be as a child. I wanted to be a pilot! 

So I handed over my resignation at Arimac on the eve of 2020 and signed up for flying school, not foreseeing the COVID pandemic that was to come. Needless to say flight training was difficult with the lockdowns and the subsequent economic crisis that Sri Lanka faced. What should have ideally taken two years took me twice as much time. With no job and a lot of time in my hand, I decided to put my tech skills that I learned over the years to good use. Seeing the existing need for a contact tracing platform for the ongoing pandemic, me and a few colleagues of mine teamed up to design one. We named it Stay Safe Sri Lanka and were able to collaborate with the Sri Lankan government to implement it nationwide. Thus lead to the launch of my second company; Abacus Technologies.     

Taking to the skies

Meanwhile I was also focused on my flight training, acquiring a Commercial Pilot License, and a Frozen Airline Transport Pilot License by the end of 2024, and I applied to the national career immediately after as a cadet pilot. I was lucky, my efforts paid off and I was recruited on the first attempt. 

Joining training in 2025, it would be an understatement to say the type rating course was challenging, albeit exciting. After going through the rigorous training process at SriLakan airlines, I was able to graduate as a First Officer and join the operation in October 2025. I have since been flying for the airline and enjoying every second of it! And no doubt no office can beat the view from mine.  

The next episode

Still a very junior pilot with roughly 300 hours on the Airbus A320 I have loads to learn to hone my profession so I intend to focus on it and become thoroughly proficient in my skills. Hopefully someday leading up to taking up command in the flight deck. Meanwhile I also intend to further enhance my academic qualifications by completing an MSc in aviation management, which I believe will be beneficial in the future. And besides that I still have my Tech Startup, although still very small at the moment with only three employees, we have been able to achieve quite a few impressive feats. I hope it would scale in the near future to a strong and sustainable business enterprise. 

So with these goals in mind and my personal life and health to be taken into account as well, the journey continues, and my sincere hope is to share all the hills and the valleys along with my insight and opinions with you in the intention that it will inspire you and contain a valuable lesson or two. By no means am I an expert at life and being 35 I’ve only lived half of it. Touch wood! But I hope sharing my successes an failures will be useful for your future and will be a guide when it is needed.

And as always, wishing you all the best for your future. Signing off!