Corporate History

OpenArc is a group of companies founded by three Chartered Engineers who are University batchmates with Computer Science, Engineering and Finance background. Company started with two employees in 1991 and grew over a period of difficult times in the country during war- torn era, to what it is today; three group companies engaged in Software Development, ICT Education and Industry Automation. Company has been running its own campus to develop its own Engineers and it has built up a talented, loyal human resource pool with long-term attachment to the company which is one of the unique strengths of the company. In the history, OpenArc developed many corporate products for Banking & Finance, Capital Markets and ERP arena and became a market leader. With this sound domain knowledge and large human resource pool available with its own campus, it has now launched series of mobile Apps which will lead to many Startups soon. Two Apps for mobile payments and Movie ticket booking have already been launched and many more are under development.

OpenArc which stands for OPEN ARCHITECTURE had a visionary beginning in an era where hardly any Open Technologies or Internet was available. Today’s IT buss words such as Open Technologies, Open Source, Internet, Cloud, Java, PHP, Android were nonexistent in that era and the founders had the vision to take the leadership in this world of Open Technologies which are the rules of the game in the present-day Software businesses. Today, three leaders namely, Daya Hettiarachchi, Vijith Sinhabahu and Lalith Goonatilleke who are Chartered Engineers, are heading three group companies; OpenArc Systems, OpenArc School and OpenArc Engineering respectively engaged in Commercial Software development, IT & Electronics Engineering Education, and Industrial Automation & Green Energy Solutions. The group Chairman Daya Hettiarachchi diverted from his professional career from Engineering to Banking & Finance after his professional studies in Management Accountancy (CIMA, UK) that he pursued after his Engineering Education. Then, along with his further education in Master’s degree in Computer Science, he again shifted his career from Banking to IT in Banks. He who pioneered in introducing computers to some Banks way back in 1986, at a time when there were no computers in use in those Banks. He and other directors carry wealth of industry experience in Engineering, Finance and IT. In 2014 Daya Hettiarachchi was recognized by the Institute of Engineers, Sri Lanka (IESL) with the ‘Engineering Entrepreneur’ merit award.

OpenArc Systems

OpenArc Systems Management is the Software arm of the group which has won international software quality management system awards and many gold awards for software products, such as Best Quality Software product awards for Leasing, Islamic Finance etc. OpenArc Systems is a CMMI level 3 quality assessed company and it is the leader in financial software market in Sri Lanka. The company managed to secure foreign investments from Japanese investors in the year 2012; OpenArc is the only software company in Sri Lanka having direct Japanese investments in equity.

During early stage in mid 1990s, company was able to capture 90% of stock broking software market within a very short time span. However, due to certain constraints, it temporarily diverted the business from Security Markets to Banking & Finance software. Within few years, company was able to capture 70% of the Finance company software market too. Today company has developed many banking & Finance software solutions with unique front-end digital features such as built in mobile payment platform, SMS alerts engine etc.

Today, while keeping its leadership in Finance Software market it is now engaged in developing series of next generation consumer software products for front-end digitization. Further it is developing a complete Internet Cloud based multitenant application for Micro Finance and IOT/Bigdata platform for any industry to use for their applications.

With the mastery of Open Architecture Technologies, OpenArc became the very first partner software company in Sri Lanka to OpenERP software community in 2013.

In 2012 company made a breakthrough in attracting its first round of venture funds from a consortium of Japanese investors. They bought the entire block of shares offered to private equity investors. Today they hold 28% of the company shares.

Another new avenue of business that the company has embarked on is Embedded Software Development (ESD) for the Japanese industrial sector. Company has now formed OpenArc Systems Japan Ltd which is a 100% subsidiary of OpenArc Sri Lanka. In October 2015 OpenArc signed a MOU with Metatechno Japan which is a leading embedded development company in Japan, for joint promotion of projects with mutual benefits.

Parallel to overseas operations in Japan, the company has now initiated its international marketing partner programme in other countries such as Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Kenya, South Africa and many other countries. This expansion plan will help the company sell its reputed software product line in the global market place. Part of the capital to be raised under proposed private placement is for this international marketing campaign.

OpenArc Campus

OpenArc School of Business & Technology (OpenArc Campus) was established at the inception of OpenArc to produce its own OpenArc people possessing unique culture and quality, to be employed within the group of companies. The company philosophy of Education talks about ‘Education’ as not-for- profit service. In 2014, the University of Moratuwa recognized dedicated services of OpenArc and signed a MoU with OpenArc appointing OpenArc as the only partner to conduct BIT external degree programme of the University of Moratuwa. Now we are planning to build the OpenArc University College with a vision to go for a fully-fledged University College with 1000 student intake in the year 2018 and thereafter to promote it as a unique place of studies providing ‘Education Solutions’ to solve many problems faced by mankind in the global scenario.

In 2008, Ministry of Education recognized OpennArc and signed a MOU to promote the one year software development diploma programme of OpenArc known as IDSD (Industrial Diploma in Software Development) and BIT degree level, free education programme of OpenArc School in the national school system. Over last two decades of existence, OpenArc School has produced more than 2500 good quality IT engineers for OpenArc Systems as well as the IT industry as a whole.

OpenArc Engineering

OpenArc Engineering Solutions is a fairly a new venture within the group which started commercial operations in the year 2014. The mission of this company is to support Industrial Software development projects in the group with various hardware devices to be used such as ATMs, POS machines & NFC devices and also robotics and mechatronic devices in the years to come. It is specialized in providing industrial automation and green energy solutions such as net-metering using Solar Power.