From Idea to Market in Six Months. The Making of Sri Lanka’s First AI-Native R&D Studio.

Project Scope

The Futurity initiative began with a clear recognition of a global market momentum, AI was no longer a futuristic concept but a commercial reality reshaping industries. Cyaniq identified that while awareness around AI was growing exponentially, very few businesses were effectively converting that awareness into actionable, high-value solutions. Every boardroom conversation was shifting toward AI, but there was a widening gap between interest and implementation.

The project scope was therefore defined as a strategic market entry into the AI solutions space, one that would position a new brand at the intersection of innovation, practicality, and value creation. Cyaniq led the end-to-end strategy and execution, encompassing:

• Market Opportunity Analysis: Mapping local and regional appetite for AI transformation, identifying whitespace in enterprise-grade, practical AI applications.
• Offering Development: Designing a portfolio of solutions built around Effortless Intelligence, AI that seamlessly integrates with existing workflows and delivers measurable gains without major infrastructure overhauls.​
• Brand Identity and Business Model: Creating Futurity as Sri Lanka’s first AI-native R&D studio, a joint venture between Cyaniq and Invos Global, with a distinctive positioning around “Where Work Meets Effort.”
• Resourcing and Staffing: Building the founding team from leadership and product development to delivery and marketing, ensuring a balance between deep technical expertise and creative market vision.
• Investor Engagement: Developing investor narratives, pitch materials, and valuation models that reflected both the vision and the commercial feasibility of the venture.
• Commercialization Planning: Crafting the go-to-market strategy, brand launch, and business development roadmap to achieve early traction.
• Execution and Market Delivery: Overseeing the first sales cycle, closing initial projects, and ensuring successful delivery to reinforce credibility and momentum.

Cyaniq’s role was comprehensive from ideation to incorporation, funding, and operationalization. The mandate was not simply to create another startup, but to design a viable business blueprint that could demonstrate the capability of Sri Lanka’s emerging AI ecosystem to deliver enterprise-grade solutions for the world.

Challenges

The most significant challenge was differentiation. By mid-2024, nearly every business from startups to global technology giants was claiming an AI capability. “AI-powered” had become an overused label, often detached from real value or measurable impact. Competing in such an environment required more than technological credibility; it demanded clarity of purpose, disciplined execution, and the ability to demonstrate tangible outcomes fast.

Additionally, the Sri Lankan market presented its own contextual challenges. While AI awareness was growing, enterprise readiness remained uneven. Many organizations lacked clean data, integrated systems, or internal AI literacy factors that could hinder adoption. Traditional software companies were already positioning themselves as AI transformation partners, leveraging legacy relationships to capture the early market.

Against this backdrop, Cyaniq had to design a business and product architecture that would:
1. Cut through market noise with a differentiated value proposition focused on simplicity and practicality rather than hype.
2.Address organizational inertia by minimizing dependency on complex readiness or transformation prerequisites.
3. Attract investment in a climate where AI valuations were often inflated but tangible local success stories were limited.
4. Achieve early commercialization within months of launch to build credibility and demonstrate proof of value to both clients and investors.

These challenges demanded not only a strong strategic foundation but also a disciplined, market-driven execution model an area where Cyaniq’s integrated expertise in strategy, marketing, and commercialization became pivotal.

Solutions

Cyaniq’s response was to architect Futurity as a new kind of AI company, one designed for practical intelligence. Rather than competing with global AI labs or infrastructure providers, Futurity’s mission was to operationalize AI at the everyday level of work: making information, knowledge, and interactions more intelligent without requiring large-scale system overhauls.

The brand was built around the concept of “Effortless Intelligence,” AI that disappears into workflows and amplifies human capability. The offering was structured around two flagship products that embodied this philosophy:

• Omni: A document intelligence and knowledge orchestration solution that allows organizations to extract, organize, and retrieve knowledge from complex document ecosystems.
• Query: A conversational web intelligence layer that transforms static websites into interactive, AI-enabled knowledge assistants.

This model offered an immediate market fit. Instead of abstract AI frameworks, Futurity provided ready-to-deploy solutions that could demonstrate quick wins critical in convincing traditional enterprises to experiment with AI adoption.

Cyaniq designed every element of the Futurity business around acceleration and credibility:

• Positioning: Articulating Futurity as Sri Lanka’s first AI-native R&D studio, a brand that builds enterprise intelligence tools locally for global markets.
• Brand Identity: Developing a distinctive, minimal, and future-facing visual identity centered on motion, adaptability, and human-machine harmony.
• Go-to-Market Strategy: Prioritizing pilot deployments with large, recognizable enterprises to generate case studies and validation.
• Investor Narrative: Structuring a seed investment round that de-risked early investors through a multi-option recovery framework, profit-based recovery, Series A exit opportunity, or founder buy-back with premium return.

The combination of disciplined brand design, well-defined offering, and investor confidence positioned Futurity as both credible and investable. Within months, the brand established itself as a serious player in Sri Lanka’s emerging AI economy.

Outcomes & Impact

The results were swift and substantial.

• From Concept to Commercialization in 6 Months: Futurity went from ideation to revenue within half a year, a rare trajectory even in global startup ecosystems.
• Landmark First Client: The company secured its first project with one of Sri Lanka’s largest publicly listed conglomerates, LAUGFS Holdings PLC, deploying Omni to AI-enable the Laugfs Power annual report, the first of its kind in the country.
• Investor Confidence: The company raised its seed funding within months of launch, led by a consortium including prominent Sri Lankan business leaders such as Mansoor Akbarally (Akbar Brothers), Altaf Jeevunjee (Jaywise Investments), and Chamika Godamanna (Ninehearts Group). The round valued Futurity at 10× its initial revenue, signaling strong market belief in the business model and execution capacity.
• Expansion and Enterprise Traction: Within its first operational year, Futurity secured projects from a US$1-billion global technology blue-chip and a US$1-billion manufacturing conglomerate, marking its entry into global enterprise delivery.
• Brand Recognition: Futurity became recognized as one of the first AI-native brands to emerge from Sri Lanka with an export-ready model, validating Cyaniq’s approach to combining commercialization strategy with innovation design.

Beyond financial and operational outcomes, Futurity’s success had a symbolic impact, it demonstrated that Sri Lankan companies could create, fund, and scale AI products that stand shoulder to shoulder with global innovators. The project redefined the country’s narrative from being a service delivery hub to a creator of original, globally relevant AI solutions.

Key Learnings

The journey from concept to commercialization offered several strategic insights that now inform Cyaniq’s broader consulting philosophy:

1. Speed is a Strategy: In fast-moving innovation markets, velocity is a differentiator. Rapid prototyping, iterative validation, and agile decision-making are essential to outpace both global and local competition.
2. Clarity Beats Complexity: In a market crowded with abstract AI narratives, simplicity and demonstrable value resonate most with enterprise buyers. Positioning Futurity around “Effortless Intelligence” allowed the brand to connect with business decision-makers rather than just technologists.
3. Investor Confidence Follows Operational Discipline: By structuring clear recovery mechanisms and showing early revenue traction, Cyaniq demonstrated that confidence in vision must be matched by financial responsibility.
4. Localization Creates Leverage: Tailoring AI products for contextual realities, language, workflows, and data environments can unlock large, underserved markets in emerging economies.
5. Integrated Strategy Drives Success: Futurity’s rapid rise was made possible by Cyaniq’s full-spectrum involvement from ideation to investment. True success in innovation projects requires alignment between brand, product, and commercialization from day one.