Rasika Karunatilake appointed as Sysco LABS Sri Lanka MD

Rasika Karunatilake has been appointed as the new Managing Director of Sysco LABS Sri Lanka. 
He previously served as the company’s General Manager and Vice President.

Karunatilake is an industry veteran with 24 years of experience in global technology across the capital markets, telecommunications, financial services, consumer internet and foodservice domains and has broad experience across product/start-up, consulting, services and captive environments.

Joining the company as its very first employee 15 years ago, he played a key leadership role in overseeing the company’s people and operations strategy and fuelled the growth of the Sri Lanka centre from a start-up to a global captive innovation centre, with nearly a thousand associates. 

He started his career as a software engineer at Informatics International before moving to London Stock Exchange Engineering as an Engineering Lead; he then progressed to the role of Programme Manager and led technology delivery for the company’s largest global capital markets accounts across North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. He was later Country Manager at MonVia, a Silicon Valley-based tech incubator and consulting firm. 

Karunatilake holds a first degree in Computer Science from the Manchester Metropolitan University, an MBA from the University of Hull and is a certified Project Management Professional. Karunatilake was a member of the board of directors of SLASSCOM – Sri Lanka’s premier chamber for the IT and BPM industries and led the conceptualisation and launch of the SLASSCOM Ingenuity Awards.

Sysco LABS is the captive innovation arm of Sysco Corporation, the world’s largest foodservice company. Sysco is a Fortune 500 company and the global leader in selling, marketing and distributing food products to restaurants, healthcare and educational facilities, lodging establishments and other customers who prepare meals away from home. Its family of products also include equipment and supplies for the foodservice and hospitality industries. With more than 71,000 associates, the company operates 333 distribution facilities worldwide and serves more than 700,000 customer locations. For fiscal 2022 that ended on July 3, 2022, the company generated sales of more than US $ 68 billion. 

Sysco LABS’s engineering teams based out of Colombo, Sri Lanka and Austin and Houston, TX, innovate across the entire food service journey – from the enterprise grade technology that enables Sysco’s business, to the technology that revolutionises interactions with customers. Sysco LABS technology is present in the sourcing of food products, merchandising, storage and warehouse operations, order placement and pricing algorithms, the delivery of food and supplies to Sysco’s global network, the in-restaurant dining experience and much more.