Universal College Lanka (UCL) officially launched UCL LaunchPad, its new student entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship programme, at the UCL Rajagiriya Campus on 10 July 2026. The initiative marks a significant milestone in how UCL connects higher education, innovation, and industry collaboration.

The event brought together students, academics, entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and specialist practitioners, reflecting UCL’s commitment to preparing graduates who can navigate complexity and create value in a rapidly changing world.

“As a university, we have two choices. We can keep preparing students for jobs that are disappearing, or we can prepare them to create the work that doesn’t exist yet,” said Dr. Chamila Ariyananda, CEO of UCL, who conceived and championed the programme. “LaunchPad is us choosing the second path, very deliberately.”

To design the programme, Dr. Ariyananda engaged Ganga Iddamalgoda, Open Innovation Specialist and Founder of Gadfly Innovation, trained in Disruptive Strategy at Harvard Business School. UCL LaunchPad is structured as a journey that emphasises founder identity, real problem discovery, rapid validation, and mentor-guided pivots.

A defining feature of the programme is its deep integration with industry. Students will work on live business challenges provided by partner organisations, gaining hands-on experience while developing solutions to real-world problems. The founding partner cohort includes MAS Holdings, TRACE, OREL Corporation, Hatton National Bank, Sino Lanka, and other ecosystem collaborators.

An industry panel at the launch highlighted why this partnership model matters. Heminda Jayaweera, Executive Director of TRACE, noted that Sri Lanka’s innovation ecosystem remains fragmented, and that meaningful innovation often happens at the periphery where diverse people interact. TRACE joins LaunchPad as an ecosystem partner, connecting student founders with spaces and practitioners that enable those collisions.

Chandima Cooray, Chief Innovation Officer of HNB and Board Director of GovTech, spoke to the urgent need for graduates who can engage with complex, constrained problems in areas such as financial services and digital public infrastructure. Dr. Rangika De Silva, Director – Innovations at OREL, emphasised the importance of building sustained innovation capacity inside organisations, rather than relying on one-off initiatives. Prabhash Hettiarachchi, Programme Architect at MAS Holdings, observed that when students work on live industry problems, the quality of thinking improves on both sides.

Over sixteen weeks, the first cohort of student founders will progress through a structured journey: starting with self as founder, moving into problem clarity and model validation, and then into live pivot cycles with industry feedback, culminating in a Demo Day in late October 2026.

Through UCL LaunchPad, Universal College Lanka reinforces its vision of education that extends beyond the classroom, empowering students to transform ideas into meaningful impact in partnership with industry.

Enquiries: launchpad@ucl.lk