Hilton is not merely a collection of buildings. The greatest international brands understand that the founders, stories, personalities, relationships, reputation and mythology surrounding a business eventually become part of the asset itself.
Jetwing can do that without becoming another anonymous foreign chain and without giving up what makes it Sri Lankan.
Why shouldn’t Jetwing become one of the reasons somebody decides to visit Sri Lanka in the first place?
Not because you sell control to somebody else. Because Herbert Cooray, Hiran Cooray and Jetwing become part of the story foreigners already know before they plan their holiday.
That is where I think the bigger problem sits.
If I am standing here with a till in my hand begging for international business while the IMF is practically part of the country’s operating system, then something has gone badly wrong.
I look at Sri Lanka and ask a very simple question: out of millions of American businesses, in a country of more than 330 million people, all looking for opportunities to make money, why are so few seriously here?
We keep naming the same handful: WSO2, Sysco Labs, Virtusa, and now AngryPages Inc.
No McDonald’s.
HSBC has pulled back.
You can count on one hand the number of serious developed-world companies making major long-term bets here.
That should bother anybody whose livelihood depends on foreigners choosing Sri Lanka.
Everyone I grew up with at CIS seems to have left for America or somewhere else. I am also likely to leave in the next few months.
And that makes me think about your decision again.
You weren’t crazy to come home. Your father was being patriotic.
I understand that.
I’ve seen it in my own family too. Palith helped found COYLE in 1999 with Jagath and others. When he died in 2005, Sharma sold his Intercontinental Hotel stock. That hotel eventually became the Kingsbury.
People build. People die. People leave. Ownership changes. Stories disappear.
And even after the war ended in 2009, investor confidence has never become what people assumed it would become.
When I was a kid in the 2000s, the dollar was around Rs 100. Now we are around the Rs 300-plus world. That is not an abstract economic statistic when your entire business depends on whether foreigners believe the country is worth visiting, investing in and trusting.
The United States Government itself put roughly $500 million of development finance behind the Colombo Port terminal project with JKH. To me, that illustrates the problem: even when American capital comes here, much of the big-ticket involvement is being driven through government-backed finance rather than thousands of ordinary American companies independently deciding, Sri Lanka is where we want to put our own money.
Would you open a Jetwing in Iraq tomorrow simply because somebody told you the war was over?
Probably not.
You would ask about the courts, the currency, the politics, safety, demand, the ability to move money, whether your asset would still be worth something in ten years, and whether the country might fall apart again.
Foreign investors ask the same questions about us.
Sri Lanka says it has independent courts, natural resources, no civil war, democratic elections, free press and everything else investors supposedly want.
And still, the number of serious developed-world firms making big bets here is tiny.
That gap is killing what businesses like Jetwing could have been, should have been and still could become.
That is why I am not dismissing publishing as some vanity exercise.
Putting a serious book about Hiran Cooray and Jetwing into a California publishing system means putting your story in front of people outside the Sri Lankan media loop: foreigners, investors, travellers, businesspeople and people with money who may never read a Colombo newspaper or watch a Sri Lankan television interview.
Going on Daily Mirror is fine.
But a local interview is still a local interview.
I want your story to travel further than that.
If somebody in California starts planning a trip to Sri Lanka and already knows Jetwing, already knows Herbert, already understands what you built and already trusts the brand before they land, that has value.
If the book succeeds, people listen to you for much longer than the thirty seconds they give a headline or social-media post.
If it fails, what have you really lost?
You probably lose 15 minutes a day at a sporting event, a meeting, YouTube or some other distraction anyway.
Give me 15 minutes.
If after 15 minutes of focused work you think AngryPages is a waste of time, then you never have to waste another minute on us.
But if we are right, you get a permanent book, a product you own, something that can earn money, something Jetwing can use, something foreigners can discover, and something your family will still have long after the interview clips disappear.
Normally I charge $300 for the initial development, and it is a lot more expensive for everyone else.
But I am not approaching you because of $300.
I mean it when I say I can do the first stage for free.
Give me roughly 10 hours across three days. Let me listen properly. I’ll build the premise, structure, cover direction and first chapter. You do not have to sit down and write 300 pages yourself.
Then you judge me.
If I misunderstood you, stop there.
If I understood you, we make the book.
For digital sales, you receive 80%. If AngryPages finances the printing, distribution and marketing, we can work 50/50 on print profits.
I am even offering to finance and print a book you have not written yet, knowing perfectly well that it may not sell.
I am willing to take that risk because I believe in your story.
I picked Fouzul Hameed because Hameedia is a Sri Lankan brand foreigners can understand. I picked Dulith Herath because Kapruka represents Sri Lankan technology and commerce. I picked Thilan Wijesinghe because of investment and the BOI.
And I picked you because Jetwing has spent half a century doing exactly what I want more Sri Lankan companies to do: build something here that foreigners actually want.
You came home.
You stayed.
You kept building.
You kept selling Sri Lanka while Sri Lanka repeatedly made your job harder.
That deserves a book.
That deserves a book.
Give me 15 minutes.
Best,
Lehan
