It started off as a dream of 4 young graduates from the University of Moratuwa. Today, it’s one of the top mobile app development companies in Sri Lanka that’s making a mark on the world. This is the story of our latest startup parable 4 Axis Solutions.

Where it all began

The story of 4 Axis Solutions begins in 2011 at the Faculty of Information Technology, University of Moratuwa. This is where the four co-founders of 4 Axis Solutions: Dumindu Kanankage, Kapilan Karunanathan, Anuruddha Alwis and Minsara Madhawa, would meet for the first time.

Sharing the common desire to build their own company developing mobile apps. They got along perfectly. Fast forward to 2012 and they were now doing their internships. Yet the desire to build their own company was still burning strong.

After working on a few projects to gain experience, all of them got together once again. They decided it was time to bring their desire to life. Thus 4 Axis Solutions was born.

The early years

The company was born and now it was time to assign responsibilities. Dumindu & Kapilan would focus on building their main app: drawing desk.

Meanwhile, Anuruddha and Madhawa would focus keeping the company alive. In other words, they began building various other apps for the local market to earn money.

By now you can tell 4 Axis Solutions isn’t your typical startup. They totally abandoned the idea of focusing all their energy into building one super product and pitching that to investors. Nope, instead they decided to build the company using only their own money.

But why take this route? Was it because no one was willing to invest in them? Actually according to Anuruddha they did have investors approach them. However, they found that these investors had their own agenda. Everyone thought, that it wasn’t worth it to take a small amount of money and give a large amount of equity in return. And so they turned down every investment offer they got.

WE ALL FLY TOGETHER OR WE ALL DIE TOGETHER

Anuruddha Alwis

So did they have a massive amount of money in the bank? No they did not. In fact, Anuruddha, Duminda, Kapilan and Madhawa would each get Rs. 2500 per month from the business. This wasn’t a salary. It was to cover their daily expenses!

They rejected investors. They rejected lucrative offers from various companies. Here they were making small apps and barely making money. It looked like a bleak picture. Until they launched drawing desk.

The launch of drawing desk

After eight grueling months of development, they finally launched drawing desk in January 2013. This was the app that would catapult 4 Axis from a simple startup to one of the the top mobile app developers in Sri Lanka.

Drawing desk in case you’re lost, is as the name suggests: an app for drawing. It has four different modes: Kids Desk, Photo Desk, Sketch Desk and Doodle Desk – each of which is aimed at different users. It’s available on Google Play, iTunes and Amazon.

Since its launch, Drawing Desk has been downloaded by 5 million people across the world. The majority of whom live in the US. Every day that number increases by 15,000 new users. Despite competition from behemoths like Google, Drawing Desk is among the top apps on the leaderboards in the US, UK, Canada and Russia.

Yup, Drawing Desk is a hit and it’s made 4 Axis Solutions a lot of money as well. On average, 4 Axis earns $1000 per DAY through Drawing desk. That’s $30,000 a month. According to the exchange rate at the time of writing, 4 Axis makes Rs. 400,000 through Drawing Desk every month!

4 Axis Solutions today and in the future

When they built their business, Dumindu, Kapilan, Anuruddha and Madhawa barely had Rs. 2500 in their pockets. Today, they run a successful company with a shared vision, earning thousands of rupees each month. They also employ 15 passionate people, each of whom they can happily say are paid well.

It’s safe to say that 4 Axis Solutions is a successful company. It’s also a company that believes in sharing it’s success with everyone that’s a part of it. How? Well, on top of their base salary, every employee gets a share of the revenue that the company earns. Awesome? Yes it is and even with this scheme in place, their cash flow remains stable. t’s easy to see why people want to work at 4 Axis Solutions.

Going forward, 4 Axis Solutions has no plans of relaxing. They plan on improving Drawing Desk by adding more features such as: stylus support. Their long-term aim is to build a suite of apps. Each of which will enjoy the same level of success as Drawing Desk.

In just 2 short years, 4 Axis Solutions has come closer than ever to its ultimate vision: to be a multi-million dollar company and global renowned app developer. With their success record, it’s only a matter of time.