Sri Lanka, Jan. 20 -- By Shabiya Ali Ahlam

The COVID-19 pandemic that slowed down the national economy largely due to lockdown related disruptions has left a significant negative impact on the country's startup segment with over 25 percent of the upcoming entrepreneurs pushed to close down their ventures.

The newly established Council for Startups shared that the pandemic resulted in about 100 ventures shutting down for good out of the 400 plus new startups that were having steady operations.

"Many were pushed to shut down and a lot of them are struggling right now. The beauty of local startups is that they become profitable within a short period, but with Sri Lanka being a small country there is the scalability issue, unlike in India,...