Entrepreneurship required chartered accountants and company secretaries to go beyond reading financial statements and to actively shape business decisions. Delivering the opening keynote, Professor Dean- Strategic Initiatives – Delhi Metropolitan Education Dr. Poorva Ranjan made these observations addressing the AAT Sri Lanka Conference 2026 held in Battaramulla recently.
“When you go through financial statements, you are reading a balance sheet containing numbers of somebody else’s dreams,” she said. She said entrepreneurship, at its core, was about identifying gaps that others had overlooked. “Insight comes when you understand beyond the world of numbers and connect it to the external world. Creativity comes when you read between the lines to discover what is missing and build something even the business owner hasn’t discovered yet,” she said, describing this ability to conduct gap analysis as skill most imaginative entrepreneurs typically lacked.
Addressing growing concerns over automation, Dr. Ranjan, dismissed fears that artificial intelligence would render financial professionals obsolete. Analytical functions are easily automated, she noted, but artificial intelligence cannot grasp local cultural nuances, operational constraints, or human vision.
To bridge this gap, Dr. Ranjan introduced her four-step Create to Dominate framework: Provide actionable solutions: Move beyond flagging operational issues as footnoted warnings and deliver concrete commercial answers, Take ownership: Direct actionable strategies directly to business owners and strategic stakeholders, claim Authority: Establish a commanding presence in key strategic decision-making forums, regardless of formal corporate titles, monetize value: Shift commercial billing models from billable man-hours toward monetizing judgement and high-impact strategy.
During the subsequent panel discussion, moderated by Professor Nagalingam Nagendrakumar of SLIIT Business School, industry leaders shared practical lessons on personal branding and scaling. Dr. Lakmal Kulasekara, Founding Director of Danthaja Pvt Ltd, noted that overcoming local hesitancy around self-promotion requires authentic storytelling rooted in real-world problem-solving, backed by uncompromising quality of execution.
Addressing market focus, Dr. Shanika Arsecularatne, CEO and Medical Director of Christell Luxury Wellness, emphasized that sustainable luxury rests on deep niche specialization. Highlighting the Pareto principle, she pointed out that 80 percent of business revenue frequently flows from 20 percent of loyal, repeat clients, underscoring the critical importance of client trust over generalized service delivery. Echoing this focus on resilience, two-time Olympian Matthew Abeysinghe urged business leaders to apply elite athletic discipline—specifically perseverance through failure, rigorous time management, and process-oriented execution—to corporate leadership.
When warned against premature expansion, Dr. Ranjan offered a final word of counsel to ambition-driven finance leaders: “Don’t go wide, go deep. Focus on your core skill stack, master your first 100 to 1,000 customers, and scale sustainably based on real value.
Source : Daily News