Kapruka.com is Sri Lanka’s largest e-commerce organization. With over 25000 products and over 30 types of distinct services, Kapruka has set the bar for the e-commerce footprint of Sri Lanka. Kapruka’s primary goal is to provide world-class service to Sri Lankans who shop online. Kapruka was formed in 2003 and its principals were set by Dulith Herath himself. Since then, the growth of Kapruka has been exponential, with a global presence and a workforce of over 400 skilled employees in Sri Lanka.
The best local and global brands at Kapruka
Kapruka has established solid partnerships with over 300 renowned brand names and it offers quintessentially the best Sri Lankan and global products of the highest quality. Customer-centric, impeccable professional standards have created a satisfied and loyal customer base for Kapruka. The availability of the best-curated brands and an ever-increasing range of gift ideas have resulted in the unprecedented success of Kapruka. Kapruka remains ambitious and committed to finding original ways of connecting Sri Lankans across the world. Today, Kapruk’s committed staff handle hundreds of orders a day with a turnover of over one billion rupees a year.
Kapruka Global Shop
The Global Shop is the second chapter of Kapruka’s operations, one that’s propelled Kapruka into the limelight in modern Sri Lanka. In one sense, it’s a totally disruptive innovation. It is a seemingly simple idea that nobody thought, cared about, or capitalized on until Dulith arrived and made it work. For example, Kapruka Global Shop gives customers based in Sri Lanka access to over 50 million global products. Here, customers can order from Amazon, eBay, Flipkart, Bestbuy, and Walmart respectively. Notably, Kapruka Global Shop will facilitate allowing Sri Lankans to order items from these popular online portals and get them shipped for a very nominal shipping fee.
In particular, customers who order products through the Kapruka Global Shop will benefit from a massive saving. For instance, they will only be paying a fraction of the shipping cost instead of the usually high shipping costs from America to Sri Lanka.
Grasshoppers
Grasshoppers is another venture conceptualized by Dulith Herath. In essence, Grasshoppers is an ecosystem of self-employed drivers that helps SME’s do e-commerce delivery. Significantly, several parties, including UN organisations, have expressed interest in exploring opportunities to introduce Grasshoppers to their respective countries. In fact, this is due to the unique way it connects SME’s in developing countries to e-trade/e-commerce. According to Dulith, Grasshoppers help SME’s overcome the three main barriers to e-commerce (import and export barriers, payment gateways/alternative payment options, and door-step delivery).
Java Lounge
Java Lounge is yet another venture from E-Commerce Guru Dulith Herath. Especially, Java Lounge came into existence in 2012, mainly because of his addiction to coffee. Significantly, by emphasizing high-quality coffee, Java Lounge caters to the true, authentic coffee shop experience. By all accounts, Java Lounge has expanded its branch network and grown from strength to strength since its inception. Thus, they have ensured a high-quality cup of coffee is just within your reach.
About Dulith Herath:
Dulith Herath was originally from what he terms “a middle-class family.” He descends from a grandfather who was a hunter. His father was an entrepreneur who started his own construction company. In this venture, his father worked 18 hours a day to run the business to support his small family. His mother was a housewife looking after the family and home. Dulith Herath is very proud of the fact that within a time period of 3 generations, he was able to turn the family fortunes around from what he terms “Veddha to Luxury”.
Dulith asserts, that he was curious from childhood and liked to dismantle toy cars to find out how they worked. This was at a time when computer technology was entering households. This combination led to his childhood passion for technology and was a driving force in his thirst to invent and interest in artificial intelligence. As a child of eight, he built an interactive robot that was able to shoot fireworks as well. As a young boy, Dulith had high aspirations and requested his father to send him to Royal College. He admits quite openly that he was able to gain entrance to Royal College through a political connection fostered by his father through a chance meeting in a petrol shed. It seems his ability to utilize his prospects and turn them into opportunities in business has been a skill learned from watching his father.
The Royal College Experience
Attending Royal College gave him access to a good education and association with like-minded boys who were tech-savvy geeks. At around the age of 13-15 years, Dulith Herath initiated and managed a ‘Whiz Kid club’ at Royal College. Here, he developed his skills in coding first using the resources at the school computer lab. He was so enthusiastic that he cut class to spend time in the computer lab. He was President of the Royal College Computer Society continuously for eight years in a row. Requiring a computer of his own, his resourcefulness came into play again as he convinced his uncle to contribute to buying him a personal computer. This was done as his parents couldn’t afford to buy one on their own for him.
He began earning money when he was young by selling software and assembling and selling computers to his friends. He was resourceful enough to become self-sufficient as a teen and able to almost afford a car by the time he was doing the G.C.E. O/L’ exam. At this point, his room was a mini science lab and he had 8 computers for his coding work. However, because of his extracurricular activities, he was ignoring his studies. His father cautioned him and encouraged him to do better in his studies. Taking the advice to heart, Dulith re-focussed attention on his studies and improving grades to be ranked 7th in the Island for the G.C.E. A/L’s exam, even though he failed one of his 4 subjects.
Overseas exposure
Having performed well on the G.C.E. A/L exam, he had the opportunity to study overseas at the University of Kentucky. His parents again came through for him and supported him in sending him to the USA to study Artificial Intelligence as he wanted. Dulith Herath worked 4 jobs while studying there and persevered academically as well.
Before forming Kapruka, Dulith Herath served as a Development Specialist at Dell Perot Systems. There he designed robust software/web applications for DELL client’s use with the aim of optimizing operational efficiency. Additionally, he also worked as an Application Architect at Microsoft. There he directed and designed new applications from conception to completion while overseeing the technical staff involved with development projects. Dulith is a graduate of the University of Kentucky, USA with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science.
It can be observed that Dulith Herath has a knack for identifying a gap in the market and finding a practical solution for it. This is first showcased by the incident of him developing a Sinhala font independent email system. This allowed sending an email as an image so that the cumbersome function of installing Sinhala fonts each time became redundant at the time. Dulith was able to patent this invention in Sri Lanka and believes this to be his first successful project.
Conclusion
Dulith’s next plan is to achieve unicorn status. A unicorn is a term given only to “startups” who have a valuation of over a billion US dollars. The blueprint for this venture has already begun. This concept promises to be an innovative global platform and it’s a joint venture, pending a patent not just confined to Sri Lanka.