A Colombo team built Sri Lanka's first AI gateway, with 200+ models billed in rupees. Meet Roar Global

Most countries consume AI built elsewhere. Roar Global decided Sri Lanka should not be one of them.

In September 2026, Roar launched Roar AI, Sri Lanka's first AI gateway, built by Roar's team in Colombo and hosted on local infrastructure. It gives developers, startups and businesses a single platform to access 200+ frontier and open source models from Anthropic, Google's Gemini, Meta's Llama, DeepSeek and more. It also provides the tools to deploy applications: locally hosted apps, integrated databases, usage controls and budget guardrails. All of it is billed in Sri Lankan rupees.

From publisher to venture builder

Roar was founded in 2014 by Mustafa Kassim as a digital publisher in Colombo. It has since rebuilt itself into an AI led venture builder structured across three clusters: Platform Media, Creative, and AI. It builds and acquires specialised companies, each solving one problem deeply, on shared infrastructure. AI is the cluster growing fastest, and where most new ventures will sit.

Roar is also an OpenAI Select Partner.

The portfolio spans 3P Media (Google marketing, 750+ accounts), Roar AdX (a Meta Managed Partner across South Asia), Creatorflow (user generated content for Australian and New Zealand brands), Apex AI, BrandRadar, and ROARLABS, its applied AI research lab launched in 2026.

Built without outside capital

Roar has been profitable for four to five years. It completed a buyback of its early investors in January 2026 and now employs 150+ specialists serving 5,000+ customers across seven countries.

We don't want Sri Lanka to simply be a market that consumes AI products built elsewhere.

Mustafa Kassim, founder, Roar Global

A company that began by publishing local language content is now building the AI infrastructure Sri Lanka's next generation of founders will build on. From Colombo, for the region.