Our Story – Keeneye Solutions

KeenEye is a bespoke software house. Whether developing complex software or re-engineering businesses what makes us unique is that we have strong values that influence how we put the human aspect of our team at the core of our processes and our integrity and a strong sense of ownership dictate how we work with our partners.

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/Our STORY

The KeenEye Story – Strong values fuels growth

Although today KeenEye has over 100 team members across 6 countries with 18 different ethnicities they started simple and small. Understanding where KeenEye comes from is key to understanding who KeenEye is today as the values and the core vision has always remained the same.

After several stints both in Asia, the US, and France in startups, Shaun Zelber, who is one of the founders and CEO, saw the need for a dedicated team of software developers to help on his startups and on associates’ startups both in France and in the USA.

He tapped his childhood friend, Steve Anthony Rosario, who was working in a consultancy in France to set up a team in Steve’s home country of Sri Lanka. The idea was to create a company that espoused the values and work ethics that were emerging in the US and France in modern startups, such as the intrinsic value of people, and investing in them, the value of treating both clients and team with integrity, and the deep values of diversity and tolerance. Another strong objective was to approach software development from a more holistic approach where all the engineers and project managers understood the actual business needs of the partners.

They got on board Nisha Tillas, who had several years of experience in business administration and finance to help set up the Lankan office as the CFO. She held dear similar values to Steve and Shaun and added gender equality as another core value.

They started servicing startups in France and the US with their core team and Steve, who now headed the sales effort, bagged a deal with a Nasdaq listed company. In 2017 Shaun moved from the US to Sri Lanka to help accelerate the growth. The team quickly added Shehal Joseph as CTO, an industry veteran, and a strong evangelist of Agile, which dovetailed nicely with the company’s core values.

As the team grew from 15 to 30 people and tackled larger projects they had to re-engineer their own processes. This meant adding a Human Capital team to get the best talent and then to keep them happy and motivated.

The team moved to its present location in Colombo 5, a hipster house in a residential area to better reflect the values that drive them. It was around that time as KeenEye hit 50 people that they saw the need to create a team that handled production and operations and to that end, KeenEye named an in-house talent, Noorain Jaleel to spearhead that as the COO. He too held dear the same values and helped implement them in all the emerging processes.

When Covid hit the world, KeenEye already had in place progressive policies such as flexible work-from-home arrangements, thus it was pretty easy to switch to full work-from-home during the first lockdowns. During the pandemic, KeenEye expanded and now has offices in Paris, France, and New York City, USA. As they grew KeenEye saw the need to diversify the team with talent from other regions than just Sri Lanka and they now have a growing team of expert consultants in Algeria as well as talent in Kenya, Nigeria, and the Philipines.

Although KeenEye has experienced exponential growth they cherish the human relationships that are at the core of who they are. Both partners and the team can testify that the values are strong and always being refined so all can be the best versions of themselves.. both as a team and as individuals.