Principals: The Quiet Architect
How Mano Sekaram Built a Norwegian Tech Group from Colombo
The founder of 99x spent two decades turning a Sri Lankan engineering firm into a Nordic-headquartered, seven-country acquisition platform — and became the diplomatic bridge between the two nations in the process.
Saint Clair Market Intelligence | March 2026
This is the first in Principals — a series of portraits from Sri Lanka’s technology ecosystem. Each piece profiles a founder or team whose work, over decades, built the infrastructure, the institutions, and the proof of concept that the next generation of companies and investors now stands on.
In 2000, Mano Sekaram founded a software company in Colombo. Twenty-five years later, that company is headquartered in Oslo, employs over 600 people across seven countries, and has acquired firms from Brazil to Norway. Sekaram himself is now Norway’s Honorary Consul General to Sri Lanka.
The arc from a small Sri Lankan engineering outfit to a Nordic tech group is not a story that gets told often enough — not because it is exceptional in isolation, but because it reveals something about the ecosystem that produced it.
Kandy to Colombo
Sekaram grew up in Kandy and entered Sri Lanka’s nascent software industry at a time when it barely existed as an industry. He raised venture capital early, then bought out his investor in 2008 — by his own account at a five-times multiple — a detail worth noting, because it established a pattern: Sekaram has consistently preferred control over scale.
The company he built, 99x, was deliberately boutique. Where peers chased volume, Sekaram chased margins. Engineers were billed at rates Sekaram has cited as more than double the Indian benchmark — justified by quality metrics the company reported as exceptional: near-zero defects across three years, less than five per cent schedule variation, minimal rework. The client base was almost exclusively Scandinavian independent software vendors who, as Sekaram once put it, “won’t buy from you unless you are twice as good as they are.”
By 2020, 99x had roughly 350 engineers, revenues of NOK 106 million, and an average annual growth rate of 30 per cent over the preceding three years. It was, by any measure, a successful Sri Lankan technology company. But it was still, structurally, a Sri Lankan services exporter.
The Norwegian Pivot
In 2021, the structure changed. Herkules Deal-by-Deal, a Scandinavian private equity vehicle backed by a consortium of Norwegian high-net-worth individuals — including Northzone founder Karl Christian Agerup and Norwegian investment firm Watrium — invested $20 million for a 60 per cent stake.
The capital was not simply growth funding. It was architectural. The investment established a holding company in Norway, provided acquisition capital, and restructured 99x from a Sri Lankan export firm into a European-headquartered group. Within two years, the valuation had grown from $30 million to $75 million.
What followed was a deliberate acquisition programme: Seeds Consulting in Norway (2021), Nextly and LeanOn in Brazil and Cleverti in Portugal (2023), Clave Consulting in Norway (2024), and five further additions across Sweden and Poland in 2025. Each acquisition extended the group’s capabilities and geographic reach. A Norwegian Group CEO, Odd Sverre Østlie — formerly of Pexip, McKinsey, and Microsoft — was appointed to oversee the consolidated entity.
Sekaram stepped back from the CEO role in January 2024, transitioning to Founder and Executive Chairman. He remains the largest individual shareholder, drives the group’s M&A activity, and sits on the group board. The engineering heart of 99x — now led by CEO Hasith Yaggahavita — remains in Sri Lanka.
The Bridge
What distinguishes Sekaram’s trajectory from a conventional founder exit is what happened alongside the corporate restructuring. Following Norway’s decision to close its embassy in Colombo in mid-2023, the Norwegian government appointed Sekaram as Honorary Consul General to Sri Lanka that September — entrusting the bilateral relationship to the person who had spent two decades building its commercial foundations.
This is not a ceremonial footnote. It is the logical consequence of two decades of corridor-building between Sri Lanka and Scandinavia. Sekaram had already chaired SLASSCOM, the IT industry’s apex body. He had co-founded Startup X Foundry, Sri Lanka’s first technology accelerator. He has chaired the Lanka Angel Network, connecting private investors with early-stage startups. His ecosystem contributions earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Computer Society in 2014.
The pattern is consistent: build the company, build the corridor, build the ecosystem. Each layer reinforces the others.
What the Story Tells Us
99x’s transformation from a Colombo engineering firm to a Norwegian tech group is instructive — not as an isolated success, but as a structural signal.
The mechanisms Sekaram used — Scandinavian PE capital, a European holding structure, acquisition-led expansion — are not unique. They are the standard playbook for globalising a technology services company. What is notable is that a Sri Lankan founder executed this playbook from Colombo, retained control of the outcome, and kept the engineering core anchored in Sri Lanka while the commercial centre of gravity shifted to Oslo.
For cross-border investors, the 99x story complicates the narrative of Sri Lankan tech as an outsourcing destination. This is a company that went from building products for Nordic clients to acquiring Nordic companies. The talent pipeline, the engineering culture, and the two-decade relationship with Scandinavian markets created the conditions for a structural shift that most emerging-market technology firms never achieve.
Whether this trajectory can be replicated — whether the ecosystem produces more founders capable of making this leap — is the question that matters. Early evidence suggests the conditions are forming. But that is a story for another time.
Sources:
Echelon, “Despite being small, you can still hire the best to build a high value, high margin business: Mano Sekaram”: https://www.echelon.lk/despite-being-small-you-can-still-hire-the-best-to-build-a-high-value-high-margin-business-mano-sekaram/
Daily FT, “99x draws $20m investment for next growth wave from Scandinavian private equity firm”: https://www.ft.lk/front-page/99x-draws-20-m-investment-for-next-growth-wave-from-Scandinavian-private-equity-firm/44-721757
Daily FT, “99x Group with seven global companies emerges as new tech powerhouse”: https://www.ft.lk/front-page/99x-Group-with-seven-global-companies-emerges-as-new-tech-powerhouse/44-768566
Herkules Capital, “The deal-by-deal team enters a partnership with management of 99x”: https://www.herkulescapital.no/news/the-deal-by-deal-team-enters-a-partnership-with-management-of-99x/
ARTECULATE, “From Strength to Strength: 99x’s Steady Growth Propels its Valuation to $75 Million and Beyond”: https://arteculate.asia/99x-steady-growth-and-beyond/
Norway in India, “Norway appoints Mano Sekaram as Honorary Consul General to Sri Lanka”: https://www.norway.no/en/india/norway-india/news-and-events/norway-appoints-mano-sekaram-as-honorary-consul-general-to-sri-lanka/
Daily FT, “99x announces leadership transition”: https://www.ft.lk/front-page/99x-announces-leadership-transition/44-756461
Adaderana Biz English, “99x poised for talent expansion in new growth phase”: https://bizenglish.adaderana.lk/99x-poised-for-talent-expansion-in-new-growth-phase/
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. All decisions should be made based on independent research and consultation with qualified advisors.
About Saint Clair – Advisory & Capital: Saint Clair practises Capital Diplomacy — fostering cross-border investment relationships between Europe and Asia through trust, insight, and strategic facilitation. Since 2016, we have specialised in the Europe-Asia investment corridor.
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