Personal Byline Archive
Bylined Writing & Opinion
Third-party editorial columns, commentary, and institutional research authored by Fathhi Mohamed on scaling Asian market enterprises.
Colombo Port has the capacity – Can the Customs keep up?
On 1 October 2026, the Prime Minister inaugurated Phase II of the Colombo West International Terminal, a USD 750 million expansion that doubles capacity from 1.6 million to 3.2 million TEUs a year. The terminal reports two million TEUs handled…
ASEAN just upgraded its trade rulebook. Most operators will scale on the old one.
On 19 September 2026, ASEAN's ten signatories adopted a declaration in Manila allowing the upgraded ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA) to apply provisionally ahead of its formal entry into force on 1 June 2027. Ministers framed it as early…
Solar Is Scaling Faster Than the Grid Built to Hold It
Sri Lanka's energy sector delivered two structurally significant milestones in the same week of September 2026: the commissioning of the Diyajanani floating solar plant on the Ibbankatuwa Tank in Dambulla, and the country's first grid-scale standalone battery storage unit in…
Where Industrial Growth Sits, and Where Scale Still Has to Be Built
Sri Lanka's economy grew 4.2 percent in the second quarter of 2026, the slowest quarterly pace since 2024, with agriculture contracting 2.3 percent and services slowing to 2.7 percent. Industry grew 7.3 percent and kept the national figure from falling…
Why scaling across Southeast Asia means pricing in the cable you never see
Four of Vietnam's eight international subsea cables failed within days of each other in late August 2026, cutting roughly 30 percent of the country's international bandwidth. Viettel and VNPT responded in real time: rerouting traffic, adding capacity through the IA…
Sri Lanka’s tourism scale problem
Sri Lanka's tourism sector delivered a contradiction in 2026 that most of the industry is reading incorrectly. Tourist arrivals through July reached 1,343,418 against 1,368,288 in the same seven months of 2025, a decline of under two percent in a…
The AI boom won’t help you scale. Your unit economics will
Southeast Asia is widely described as living through an AI-driven startup boom, with rising funding, expanding talent pipelines, and new AI research hubs across Hanoi, Bangkok, Manila and Jakarta. This piece argues that framing misses the actual mechanism at work.…
Sri Lanka’s revenue boom has a countdown
Sri Lanka Customs reported to Parliament's Committee on Ways and Means that the country imported 316,000 vehicles in the first half of 2026, producing Rs. 512.55 billion in tax revenue. Total Customs collection reached Rs. 1.379 trillion by 30 June…
Southeast Asia’s SMEs do not have an AI problem. They have a record problem
The piece opens on a Colombo distributor proudly demonstrating a demand forecasting dashboard. Clean charts, confidence bands, reorder quantities. One question dismantles it: the underlying order data came from a junior staffer retyping WhatsApp messages each evening, sometimes guessing when…
The State cannot scale what it refuses to close
On September 3, 2025 the Cabinet issued a binding directive: the Ministry of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development was to appoint liquidators for a group of inactive state-owned institutions. By May 31, 2026, the National Audit Office found no substantive action…
When the cost floor rises, the scale ceiling drops
July inflation came in at 7.2 percent, up from 6.5 in June. Treated as a monthly print it says little. Broken into its parts it describes a change in terrain. Of those 7.2 points, non-food contributed 5.04 and food 2.21.…
The creator economy is distribution, not marketing. Most Asian businesses are still scaling it like a campaign
A review of a consumer brand's best month on record showed live commerce carrying it, gross merchandise value close to vertical. Then the operations lead opened the delivery outcomes file. A meaningful share of what sold on stream never completed,…
Import bill setting Sri Lanka's scale ceiling
The Central Bank's June external sector data showed a current account deficit of US$149 million, the third consecutive monthly deficit, taking the first half of 2026 to a cumulative US$245 million against a surplus a year earlier. The merchandise trade…
Sri Lanka's labour depth is now its real scale ceiling
On August 3 an official of the National Chamber of Exporters, a body representing around 700 companies, said publicly what members had been saying privately for a year: they cannot find or keep workers at any skill level, least of…
Southeast Asia solved distribution: Now fintech has to scale on the balance sheet
A founder showed a growth chart, monthly actives climbing, merchant count doubling, transaction volume up across three markets, then asked which wallet licence to apply for next. Asked what his cost of funds would be, neither he nor his finance…
Export basket widening - the scale base under it is not
Sri Lanka's first half export figures landed on July 22, and one line inside them deserved more attention than the headline. Total exports reached US$9.01 billion, up 8 percent year-on-year. Further down the table, exports of electrical and electronic components…
The infrastructure choice that now decides how you scale
A founder deciding where to host the data and AI stack behind an expansion into Vietnam and Indonesia found the question moving through legal, government relations, and a conversation about which technology bloc the business wanted to be tied to…
Sri Lanka's scale ceiling now runs through the cost of capital
On July 21, 2026 the Monetary Policy Board of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka held the Overnight Policy Rate unchanged at 8.75 percent, pausing after a 100 basis point increase in May. The Board cited Middle East tensions pushing…
Southeast Asia doesn't have an AI adoption problem, it has a scaling problem
Every quarter, reviewing the operating reviews of businesses using this scaling framework, one pattern has become impossible to ignore. The AI tooling line has grown fast, new copilots and agents stacked on top of CRMs and ERPs that haven't changed…
Sri Lanka's bond rally, a scale signal, not a victory lap
For three consecutive weeks in July, foreign investors added to their holdings of Sri Lankan rupee bonds, pushing total foreign participation to its highest level since 2023. Offshore investors bought a net US$97.1 million of Government securities in the week…
Sri Lanka’s tariff reset is a scale test, not a trade footnote
On 1 July 2026 the World Bank approved the first 150 million dollar tranche of a three-part REGROW Development Policy Operation, built around trade barrier reduction, investment climate reform and private sector competitiveness. It landed in the same week Sri…
Sri Lanka’s SMEs are small as nothing forces them to scale
Sri Lanka's economy grew 5.1 percent in the first quarter of 2026, the strongest pace in three quarters. In a Moratuwa coir exporter's back office or a Kurunegala packaging firm, nothing about that number is felt. Growth at the macro…
Colombo’s gridlock, a scale ceiling
Close to two million people move into and through Colombo every weekday, along seven radial corridors converging on a single colonial core, into a Western Province generating around 40 percent of national output on under six percent of the land.…
Corruption reform rewrites business rules in Sri Lanka
Last year CIABOC received 8,409 complaints. A former President has been arrested over alleged misappropriation of public funds, a sitting energy minister indicted, a 1996 World Cup captain placed under a procurement case. The National Anti-Corruption Action Plan 2025 to…
The unified ERP decision that determines whether Sri Lanka scales
Sri Lanka's recovery is gaining ground and owners who spent two years in survival mode are asking how to grow. The direct answer is that most cannot scale the way they plan to, and the reason is not market size,…
The talent question every founder needs to ask before they try to scale
AI is not shrinking teams. It is revealing whether a team was ever built to scale in the first place. The pattern repeats across almost every business working on scaling in Asian markets: product working, revenue real, founder decides to…
Singapore’s blueprint for Sri Lanka’s recovery
In 1965 Singapore had GDP per capita of 516 dollars, a third of its population in slums, 14 percent unemployment and no natural resources. Six decades later it stands at 94,912 per capita, third globally on governance integrity, with 80…
The founders who scale in SEA are rebuilding customer experience from the operating layer up
AI-powered CX is not a technology investment. It is a scaling decision. Most founders in Southeast Asia get customer experience wrong at exactly product-market fit, when the product works, customers are coming in, and the temptation is to hire more…
When the demand floor drops, the scale ceiling falls with it
Sri Lanka's consumption compression is not a household budget problem. It is a scale threshold event separating businesses with genuine operational architecture from those still running on peak demand assumptions. On 1 April 2026 headline inflation registered 5.4 percent year-on-year,…
Sri Lanka’s exports, a scale constraint
Sri Lanka's export concentration is a scale constraint, not a trade problem, and the distinction determines which businesses survive the next recovery cycle. Reserves are stabilising, external confidence is returning, but the export basket looks almost identical to two decades…
When the financial rails cannot support the scale load
In April 2026, two incidents forced Sri Lanka's financial system into uncomfortable public scrutiny. A $2.5 million cyber fraud against the Treasury's External Resources Department diverted a sovereign debt repayment through an email-compromise attack. NDB Bank disclosed a Rs. 13.2…
When arrivals fall, scale thinking must rise
The numbers released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority on April 18 are precise and unambiguous. Arrivals for the first half of April reached 68,961, the lowest two-year reading for that period. March closed at 183,979, down 19.7 percent…
The scale layer nobody budgeted for: How AI agents unlock growth for Asian businesses
A pattern repeats across every business working on scaling in Asian markets. The product works, customers are real, unit economics are defensible, then growth stalls, not because the market rejected them but because the operating layer couldn't keep up. Who…
When the New Year reveals the scale you have not yet built
The Sinhala and Tamil New Year traditionally marks the most complete pause in the Sri Lankan business calendar. This year, that pause arrived against a backdrop that makes it structurally significant rather than merely seasonal. Fuel rationing remained in effect.…
The hidden cost of scaling in Asia: Why operational complexity decides who wins
Founders often believe scaling is about capital, product-market fit and user growth. But across Asia's fragmented markets, the companies that succeed are the ones that build operational systems capable of managing complexity. Founders who attempt to scale across Asia quickly…
When global disruption becomes a scale signal
Every major global disruption reshuffles logistics maps. The Middle East crisis, driven by Iran-related tensions resulting in Gulf airspace and shipping rerouting, is doing exactly that this month. Colombo is not watching from the periphery. It is receiving a direct…
Scale builders win Sri Lanka’s fuel crunch
Every major supply disruption in Asia produces two types of operators. The first waits for conditions to normalise. The second reads the constraint map and moves. Sri Lanka's fuel rationing, triggered by the Strait of Hormuz supply disruption since late…
What scaling in Asia teaches you that Silicon Valley doesn’t
Silicon Valley has become the global reference point for how companies scale, but it represents a specific environment: capital abundant, infrastructure reliable, institutions predictable, failure socially tolerated. Asia operates under a very different set of realities, and a decade working…
Turning women’s participation into a national scale strategy
Every March, Sri Lanka marks International Women's Day with sincerity and visibility. Corporate breakfasts are organised, ministries issue statements, financial institutions promote special lending products. It is well intentioned. In economic terms, it is peripheral. Sri Lanka runs its economy…
Bureaucracy: A scale problem, not governance
Sri Lanka is in a rebuilding phase, debt restructuring progressing, inflation stabilising, external confidence cautiously returning. Beneath the improvement sits a quieter constraint: regulatory bureaucracy and business environment friction. Not a political statement. A systems diagnosis. The pattern repeats across…
Sri Lanka: A Capital Problem, Not A Talent Problem
Sri Lanka is stabilising. Inflation has cooled, the currency has steadied, fiscal discipline is back in policy language, the IMF programme has restored a degree of macro credibility. But stability is not scale. Loan approvals take months. Interest costs erode…
Capital Scarcity Is Locking Sri Lanka into a Recovery Trap
Sri Lanka is no longer in free fall. Inflation is contained, reserves have improved. But stability is not scale. An economy can stabilise without building momentum. Businesses can survive without compounding. Nations can recover on paper while remaining structurally capped.…
Sri Lanka: Recovered on Paper but Not Rebuilt Its Engine
Sri Lanka's macro recovery is no longer theoretical. Growth for 2026 is projected around 4.5 to 5 percent. Inflation has normalised to low single digits. Foreign reserves have been rebuilt. By any post-crisis standard, this is stability. Yet most operators…
Sri Lanka is not short on talent It is short on scalable teams
Sri Lanka's economic conversation has shifted from collapse to recovery. That shift is necessary, but not sufficient. Recovery stabilises systems. Scale transforms them. The uncomfortable reality is that Sri Lanka's biggest constraint today is not capital, policy, or demand. It…
How Sri Lankan Businesses Can Scale Through Quality and Innovation
Sri Lankans prioritise education in a way few nations do. Households protect school fees in difficult years, communities mobilise donations for classrooms and libraries, alumni associations quietly finance laboratories. Education has always been treated as a long-term asset by citizens,…
Municipal Budget Triumphs Harnessing Local Gains for Business Scale in 2026
The start of a new year brings a familiar ritual: budgets announced, promises debated, businesses waiting to see what the state will deliver. The uncomfortable reality is that scale has never come from waiting. In 2026, the most meaningful opportunities…
Make 2026 the year Sri Lankan businesses build bigger
Sri Lanka is closing one of its most difficult years in recent memory: cyclone damage, fragile demand, tight credit, lingering uncertainty. History shows something uncomfortable but true: extraordinary scale rarely comes from comfortable years. It comes from disruption. Concessional finance,…
Digitise to De-Risk; A No-Bull, Low-Cost Digital Roadmap for Sri Lankan MSMEs
Sri Lanka does not have an innovation problem. It has a predictability problem. Thousands of MSMEs work hard, produce quality goods and serve loyal customers, yet remain fragile. One shock, one delayed payment, one inventory mistake, and the business slips…
Family Business to Scalable Enterprise: Sri Lanka’s Urgent Transformation
For decades, Sri Lanka's economy has been carried by thousands of family enterprises built on trust, reputation and persistence. These businesses survived civil conflict, political cycles, supply shortages and currency fluctuations. Their strength has always been relationships and adaptability. Yet…
Rise Beyond Cyclone Ditwah: Rebuild Bigger, Stronger
Cyclone Ditwah hit Sri Lanka hard: stockrooms swept away, machines buried, shopfronts ripped open. For business owners, especially MSMEs, the most important decision now is whether to merely repair, or to rise and scale. The international community and Government are…
Why Post-Cyclone Sl Must Rise Beyond Normal
When a country faces a catastrophe like Cyclone Ditwah, the first instinct of every business owner is to fix what was broken: restore the shop, reinstall the machines, rebuild to what existed before. But crises do not merely destroy. They…
Why Sri Lanka’s Next Economic Era Will Reward Builders, Operators and Systems Thinkers
Sri Lanka is entering the most consequential business transformation in decades. This is not another economic cycle. It is a structural shift in how companies grow, compete and survive. In the new economy, scaling is not ambition. It is survival.…