"In October 2016, I had to do a research for my final year project for my undergraduate studies. Desperate to find a topic, I began researching about entrepreneurship and its impact on the social wellbeing. One particular aspect of entrepreneurship gained my attention more than anything else; it's small businesses. The mom-and-pop shop in the street corner which sells homemade biscuits, the small cart that sells sweets and the truck on wheel which makes amazing pizza on the go.

During the latter part of 2016, I got to know that SpaceX and several other companies and government intities including NASA are planning to colonize Mars before 2030. Although it remains skeptical, it opened my eyes to another dimension.

Going to another planet is a pretty big deal! It's not in anyway a small feat of engineering, technology and sheer willpower. Going against all the odds to explore the horizon and extend the human consciousness. It sounds crazy but it's gonna happen whether we like it or not! We are talking about an entire shift in reality and how we consider delivering value to humanity.

Think about how we would do business? What opportunities would lie ahead of us? How would we forge our pathway on Mars and eventually when we go out exploring other planets, stars and eventually galaxies in the universe? Think about how rapidly the transportation system would evolve once the inter-planetary transportation systems improve? Think about how it would impact the social, economic and cultural fabrics of society.

With the emergence of Industry 4.0, the exponential improvements of Automation, Blockchain and Artifical Intelligence have made it impossible to imagine or to predict the world that we would live in a few decades from now. Businesses around the globe are investing heavily in Industry 4.0 technology and best business practices to ensure that they remain relevant in this new Industrial Revolution.

During my research, I spoke to several small business owners and one of the factors which kept on popping up was the lack of affordable cutting-edge tools small businesses can use. Although this is far from the truth, I did a research about their knowledge of the current transition from Industry 3.0 to Industry 4.0 and the results were shocking.

Most of the business owners were unaware of the digital revolution which is taking place in this world right now. Lack of awareness will be the main reason that most businesses will be wiped off and it was sad to realise that most of the potentially affected businesses are the small businesses; the mom and pop shop which sells tea in a corner, the street food vendor who makes rotti (a form of pancake type made with flour, salt, water and coconut in Sri Lanka) in a wooden cart and the bookshop owner who runs the business to support his family.

So, I made a Windows 10 Universal Windows Platform (UWP) based app to manage all the resources for one of my friend's small business. It went on to be featured as a case study on Syncfusion (Check it out here!)which made me realise that "hey, we can make ourselves something out of this approach!"

So that was the birth of 'CipherDev Labs™'!

We created and designed 'CipherDev Labs™' to enable businesses to accelerate innovation by challenging people and businesses to explore the limits of possibilty and extend it!

I started my Master's Degree in Technology Management from the Staffordshire University, UK in February 2018 almost immediately after my Bachelor's Degree in Applied Information Technology. My dissertation project which was a "Blockchain Technology implementation framework to increase the performance of Fresh Produce Supply Chains in Sri Lanka" was selected as the "Best Technology or Framework Innovation" at the Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM) Innovation Awards and Gala 2019 which was held on Thursday, the 14th of November 2019 at the Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

In May 2019, we saw another opportunity of the lack of solid knowledge on Industry 4.0 and Digital Transformation learning solutions to address the significant gap in Industry 4.0 domain-specific knowledge on a variety of industries such as Maritime, Aerospace, Retail, Aquaculture and a whole lot more. This paved the way to create our exclusive Online Learning platform "CipherDev Labs™ Learn". On 4th of January 2023, we started serving over 10,000 students in 120 countries worldwide using our "CipherDev Labs™ Learn" platform onUdemy

This is our story in the making! As each year passes by, this story will grow and continue to expand till we reach our destination! Thank you for being a part of our journey!"

Deshan Kuruvita - Aratchy
CEO and Founder
Wednesday, the 4th of January 2023