Always seeing a silver lining in her vision for the perfect gift
Yanika recently turned 30, and says it was a privilege to be named on the list. Fellow Sri Lankans Charith N. Silva (Wild Cookbook on YouTube) was named in the Arts category, while Nikin Matharaarachchi (Founder- Synapse AI Labs) was named in the Social Media, Marketing and Advertising category. They will meet for the first time at the Forbes 30 Under 30 summit in September. Yanika plans to expand Silver Aisle beyond Sri Lanka soon, so this will be an opportunity to chat with other founders servicing larger markets.
Yanika: Expanding her horizons
In Sri Lanka her market may be small, with a niche audience, but Silver Aisle has made a mark in how consumers think of gifting. After a year of building a highly complex back-end operation, Yanika launched Silver Aisle in December 2019. She was addressing a very specific gap in the wedding industry that she had noticed for a while. Newly married couples would be inundated with multiple sets of tableware from well-meaning friends and relatives, but find themselves without “the unsexy items that you really need for a new home, like a blender,” she laughs. “The balance was missing. I wanted Silver Aisle to make that easier for both couples and guests – there’s no second guessing or the hassle of running out at the last minute to buy something for a wedding. You just go online and choose something that the couple have already marked out. We take care of everything else after that.”
Yanika launched Silver Aisle just three months before COVID shutdowns came into effect in Sri Lanka. It was an unexpectedly bad time to start a wedding gift registry – the couples who were planning to use Silver Aisle had to postpone their weddings, and the pandemic stretched on for far longer than anyone anticipated. Yanika wasn’t about to watch her dream business fold so easily- “I still had bills to pay!”- so she pivoted Silver Aisle to gifting, rather than offering only a wedding registry service. What started as a temporary measure took off, and soon Silver Aisle became known for its excellent selection of gifts for loved ones.
What makes the platform usable is its clean, elegant design and Yanika’s refusal to believe that gifts have to be traditional, boring, or even physical. ‘Experiences’ are a popular choice; on Silver Aisle, you can gift your best friend a cocktail-making class for two, or your partner a pottery or golf lesson. An afternoon candle making class with mum? They’ve got you. That flexibility might help explain why the platform has caught on with older customers – a group Yanika hadn’t expected to reach. But as more people became tech-savvy during COVID, many found themselves drawn to the ease of buying a thoughtful gift online.
If you asked a younger Yanika whether she would be running her own business from Colombo, she probably wouldn’t have said yes. She double majored in Political Economy and Mass Communication at UC Berkeley in California with her sights set on a career in digital marketing. During an internship at an agency in San Francisco, she realized it wasn’t the right fit. A period of uncertainty followed. She describes it as feeling a little lost – but a conversation with a life coach at Berkeley helped Yanika to carve out a path in entrepreneurship. She went on to pursue an MSc in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Management at Imperial College, London.
“I was so fixated on becoming a social entrepreneur at first,” she remembers. “But a mentor gave me a piece of really good advice: before you try to make money for others, learn how to make money for yourself.” Looking back, it was excellent advice for her, says Yanika. “It’s so hard to get to a point where you’re making your bottom-line work as an entrepreneur. Learning that has made me appreciate what it would take to make a business that seeks social impact sustainable.”
When Yanika began building Silver Aisle in 2019, she turned to her father for advice and an initial investment. His guidance was clear: build with integrity, honour commitments and stay focused on delivering a quality product. Taking that to heart, Yanika made a conscious decision to hold off on seeking additional funding until she knew how to make the business work. The learning curve was steep and she was careful not to take risks with other people’s money until she was confident in her own capabilities. Five years in business, she says, has given her confidence that comes from hard-won experience.
Silver Aisle is now in the process of expanding into the Middle East – a move Yanika sees as both exciting and necessary, given the limitations of the Sri Lankan market. Still, she admits to the occasional imposter syndrome, especially when comparing herself to other Forbes nominees operating at a much larger scale. In those moments she has to remind herself that she built a business during COVID, driving real behaviour change among consumers. What kept her steady through the Forbes selection process was staying focused on what mattered most to her – building something original, creative and useful.
She looks back fondly to when she was wearing many hats at the start – processing orders, delivering them, managing the front-end of the business, taking photographs, personally pitching to vendors. “The beauty of running your own business is the flexibility, but it’s also a 24/7 responsibility. When you’re in that mode for five years you can get so caught up in the everyday, and sometimes you go through these periods of stagnation and tough market conditions, and wonder why you’re doing it, but you keep pushing through. It’s so rewarding to be recognised for it.”
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